Remedy to Loneliness
by BC
Summary: Dr Stark and Dr Banner had known one another prior to the meeting on the helicarrier. And not just biblically. Neither of them is a good man, but that's a part of the attraction.
1. Long Time No See

Summary: Dr Stark and Dr Banner had known one another prior to the meeting on the helicarrier. And not just biblically. Neither of them is a good man, but that's a part of the attraction.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything the Marvel owns. And I still don't get paid for writing fanfiction.

Warnings: slash, sexual situations (for not being straight up porn they get kind of explicit), a bit of dominance games, violence, infidelity, past abusive relationship (physically and mentally abusive, _not_ sexually), mentions of torture, referenced murder, alcohol abuse, addiction, depression, arguably sociopathic Tony, implied brainwashing, unreliable narrator

There is no noncon or dubcon in this story; however, there are moments that look like dubcon. The consent is not clearly negotiated, but the people have known one another for years and trust each other. No one is hurt. It's just not exactly safe or sane. (Don't do this at home.)

A/N: Please read the warnings. This is not an easy story about happy, healthy people.

Tony will seem unjustly overcritical and unforgiving (and blatantly hypocritical), but having known people who had been badly betrayed and hurt, I know for a fact that this is a realistic portrayal. If anything, Tony's willing to give more chances than could be expected of him. He doesn't much resemble the movie-canon Tony, but I think he is reasonably authentic in his own way.

Now that I think of it, the same goes for the other characters. Except Steve. Steve is MCU all the way.

I built the story mostly around the 2012 Avengers movie, so you may recognise bits of dialogue, but I wasn't interested in rewriting the script, so it's generally abridged and occasionally tweaked.

x

Chapter One: Long Time No See

x

Romanov was actually perceptive enough to notice that Tony took Rogers' obnoxiousness as a challenge, so she herded Captain Permafrost away before either of them could get really competitive.

Tony congratulated himself on that, because while Rogers was thick enough to remain oblivious to everything that wasn't the _Wonderful Wizard of Oz_ , Romanov had been on the verge of noticing.

It took one compliment, one teasing one-liner and one handshake, and the conference room on Fury's flying contraption of doom as good as buzzed with tension.

"Dr Banner," Coulson said, too tense himself to be as observant as usual, "I'll take you to the lab we have cleared for you."

Whatever Barton was to Coulson, it made Coulson stupid. It was disappointing to watch. Tony had thought that the Agent was like Pepper – but no, the world once again confirmed that Pepper was one of a kind.

"I'm not attracted to you anymore," Tony told the man with all sincerity – and didn't even get an eyeroll in response.

Coulson just straight up ignored him. "I am in charge of coordinating this mission, so provide me with a list of what you need. The TSS weren't quite certain what sort of monitoring equipment you would require, but they have prepared a-"

"Dr Stark," Banner said quietly, more _under_ Coulson's monologue than over it, and yet stopping the avalanche of words more effectively than if he had shouted, "may I have a moment of your time? Could we have a conversation in private? I'll understand if you'd rather not-"

"C'mon, _Dr Banner_." Tony spun on his heel and walked down the corridor with the confidence of a man that had memorized the blueprints of the aircraft he was on, and who knew he would be followed. He was a little surprised that Banner managed to somehow shake off Coulson in the process – and impressed, too. Coulson was like a pit bull when he wanted something.

Apparently, his jaws were too busy holding onto the idea of rescuing Barton to properly bite down onto anything else.

Tony found an unoccupied room, disconnected the security camera and smirked as soon as the door was closed behind Banner. "I don't remember you being this self-effacing, Robert."

"Tony- Dr Stark-"

"Tony," he confirmed. Without asking permission from his brain, his smirk grew into a grin.

"Tony," Banner repeated, shoulders hunched and eyes trained onto his – frankly appalling – footwear, "I just wanted to say how terribly sorry I am. I know I don't have a right to ask you to forgive me, but I truly regret how I treated you when- back then. It was unconscionable, and I am so asham-"

"Alright, stop before I break out in hives." Tony raised his hands, palms out, and waited until Banner did him the courtesy of meeting his eye.

Tony didn't usually spend a lot of time looking people in the eye, too busy searching for other cues (were they scared? were they lying? were they trying to get into his bed? did they want to kill him?), but Banner's peepers were some of his most favorite to this day. To be fair, he probably hadn't had so much eye-contact during sex with anybody else, ever… on the other hand, that might have been a side-effect of all the – cough – _chemical experiments_ they used to engage in. It was hard to tell after such a long time.

"I've…" Banner rubbed his fists against his upper arms in a weird, probably painful self-hug. "It sounds trite, but I have changed. This entire – _situation_ – made it pretty much a necessity. And I know it's too little, too late-"

Tony laughed into his face. "C'mon, Doc. You're acting like I was some fragile little girl you beat on."

"I did-"

"I was a bastard," Tony assured him. "I could defend myself. I took out my own pound of flesh. And, frankly, you were only one in my long string of abusive relationships. Before I gave up on the idea of relationships altogether."

"I'm sorry."

"So you've said." Now Tony was bored of this line of conversation. Could they go back to the physics behind Selvig's machine post haste? He waved his hand; poked at Banner's shoulder; moved around the room to shake off the claustrophobia of this discussion. "And I'm telling you, it's fine. You say you're a different person now – fine by me. I'll have to get to know the new guy. Clean slate."

"That's too magnanimous," Banner protested, but the effort was lackluster at best. Clearly, he genuinely wanted to be forgiven.

That was novel. The Banner whom Tony remembered mostly just wanted to be punished. Forgiveness had never really factored into it.

"But?" Tony inquired, quirking his eyebrows.

"Thank you, Tony," Banner replied earnestly. An unfamiliar expression formed in between the lines of his mouth and the tightening in the corners of his eyes. It almost looked like – holy shit! – a _smile_. An actual smile.

Banner wasn't kidding when he said he was a different person, was he.

Tony nodded and clapped, mentally closing the topic. He was ready to get to the next salient point. "Great. Wanna have sex?"

He was rewarded with a bout of shocked laughter. "God, you haven't changed a whole lot, have you?"

Tony shrugged. If where he was, what he was doing and how he had gotten to this place weren't sufficient evidence of change, he'd just wait for Banner to meet the Iron Man. That usually gave people enough of a pause to rethink taking Tony at face value.

"More than is readily apparent," he said. "But I did mean the question." He raised his eyebrows.

"You don't," Banner mumbled, hanging his head and hunching his shoulders again. "The other guy-"

"Oh, now that sounds like a challenge." Tony frankly thought it sounded like a load of bullshit – but, as opposed to the past Tony whom Banner had known, he occasionally cared enough to censor himself. "In the meantime, let's go show these catsuited losers how to save the world."

x

A handful of hours into his coding spree, Tony was brought out of the zone by the angry growl of a stomach. Bemused, he looked down at his belly.

No, that wasn't it. He reached out for his coffee cup – _paper_ , of all things – and discovered that it was empty.

When he looked over, Banner was making a sheepish expression at him. Tony rubbed his eyes and looked again. Nope, Banner's face was still doing the weird thing.

"So," he said, tracking that odd expression as Banner moved around the room, "this band of incompetents need us to do their work for them, but they don't even bother to provide any catering."

Banner's face finally reconfigured itself into something more familiar, and thus far less disconcerting – impotent rage. "Kidnappers usually don't bother with catering."

Tony relaxed. "A great point to raise with my army of lawyers, Shaun the Sheep. In the meantime, you're hungry and I've got a craving for Italian. Jarvis-"

"With respect, sir," Jay's voice said from Tony's laptop, since they were still pretending that the A.I. hadn't completely infiltrated SHIELD's servers, "even if I found a restaurant that delivers this far, the Helicarrier's security protocols-"

"Way to be a downer, Jay," Tony grumbled. A glance at Banner confirmed that the man was pretending not to be in the room while making middling progress on the tracking program. "I'd pop out in the armour, but…"

"I know, sir," JARVIS agreed with mocking sympathy.

"Work, work, work…" Tony pushed himself away from the desk. "Save our progress, buddy, and lock out all these nosy parkers. Intellectual property and all that jazz. Banner, you're mine-"

This finally made Banner turn to Tony, but he was too slow to protest.

"-by which I mean, you're working for me, so _your_ work is _my_ work and _not_ SHIELD's work. Everybody clear on that?" Tony looked toward the corner of the room, where one of the security cameras was mounted. "Spiffy. Jay, have Pep send me a contract for Banner to sign, so we can make it all legal. Hop to it."

"Hopping, sir," confirmed the A.I. "My condolences, Dr Banner."

Tony tsk-ed at his virtual butler, and then pulled Banner from the room by his sleeve, which was always a risk. Banner seemed to have meant it seriously about him having changed, because Tony wasn't immediately a recipient of a pointy elbow to a soft part or a hand tightening around his throat.

He wasn't yet sure if he liked this change, but that wasn't important at the moment. Finding the lunchroom took precedent.

By the time they arrived at the mess, Banner had somehow acquired a bunch of folders stamped 'CONFIDENTIAL' on the outside. Tony hadn't seen him do it, and they hadn't met a whole lot of people along the way – he was torn between feeling disconcerted and deeply impressed.

They stood side by side in front of the counter and surveyed their dietary options. It wasn't quite slops – except the honest to god _oatmeal_ that apparently was one of the breakfast options – but by Tony's standards none of it even neared palatability. And this was coming from a man that had once survived a couple of months on green goop smoothies.

He wasn't touching on the cave in the desert thing, but, hey, even those Ten Rings fuckers knew that if you wanted good work out of somebody, you had to feed them.

Banner's experience with the depths of culinary failure was, naturally, far broader, so he ended up leading the charge (spurred by his grumbling gut). Who even knew when the guy had eaten last before SHIELD grabbed him in India?

He picked a couple of sad excuses for a sandwich and one of those teas made of poly(vinyl chloride) and emulsions. With the files wedged between his upper arm and his ribs he looked like a scoliotic penguin as he carried his tray to a free table. The agents milling and sitting around noticed, and a few found it profoundly amusing. One young man nearly busted a gut.

Tony didn't bother with a tray. He grabbed two sandwiches of his own – going by the logic that a guy as experienced with scavenging as Banner had to be would have good instincts regarding what was eatable – and an energy drink. He slipped a chocolate bar into his pocket, and hoped that his animal heat wouldn't melt it completely.

He dropped into an aluminum-and-bakelite chair next to Banner. "Fury should fire his interior designer."

"I don't know," Banner quipped, one corner of mouth raised in an almost familiar smirk-grin. "I like the juxtaposition of the Art Deco against the futurism. Very existentialist."

"Exactly what you want to convey on a secret flying aircraft carrier full of spies and assassins." Putting aside the incongruently cheap feel of his current surroundings, Tony felt that futurism automatically created a juxtaposition against the environment of the present – that was the point.

Banner was just winding him up. Maybe he didn't want Tony to focus on his bounty.

"Interesting reading?" Tony inquired, taking a bite of his sandwich. It wasn't half as disgusting as he feared it would be.

Banner finished eviscerating his own food. Four floppy pink not-quite-circles of something that wasn't ham, no matter how hard it pretended, gathered at the edge of his tray. "Eat."

"Share."

"No."

Tony moved to pinch Banner's thigh before he realized what he was doing. He used to do that, _back then_. A lot. Every time Banner would grab him too hard, press on bruises, try to order him or say something especially cutting, Tony reacted by pretending complacency and getting his revenge unnoticed under the cover of the tabletop or just their bodies. The thigh was easiest, but not always his preferred target.

On one memorable occasion Tony had managed to pinch the skin of Banner's _balls_ without anyone watching being any wiser. He had paid for that one later with a sprained wrist, but in hindsight it had been worth it.

Here, however, in the middle of SHIELD's mess hall, surrounded by a bunch of sneaky, government-sanctioned stalkers, Tony had only gone for the thigh, and even then Banner dodged. And scowled, fiercely enough that there was some commotion behind Tony's back that sounded a lot like several jumpy G-men going for their guns.

"Eat," Banner ordered.

Tony's fingers spasmed with the need to administer a retaliatory pinch, but he managed to tamp down the urge. He ate.

So did Banner. They made it through their pathetic facsimile of a meal in relative silence.

Afterwards Banner made some sounds about cleaning their table, like he'd forgotten that Tony was _Tony Stark_ , and he _didn't bus_. He stood there and radiated impatience while Banner went to dispose of his tray and then came back, winding among the chairs and the people with ease that betrayed his skill at navigating a crowd.

Coupled with his exceptional situational awareness it couldn't have been a coincidence when an agent stood up from his seat and unwittingly backed directly into Banner. Banner let his folders scatter over the floor – on purpose, Tony didn't doubt.

The agent (the one with the braying laugh and the nearly-busted gut) and his two buddies leapt to help gather the papers, in a flurry of apologies from both sides. Tony only saw what happened because he had been watching closely, and because he _knew_ Banner.

"It's okay," Banner was reassuring the wary SHIELD toadies, who seemed to expect him to hulk out for being bumped into, "I should have been paying attention. Thank you. I'll just be…" He gestured toward Tony, looking supremely awkward. "Right. So, uh… bye."

Tony remained silent about the performance until they were safely out of sight and earshot. The staircase hatch fell shut behind them with a clang.

"What did you put into his glass?" Tony asked.

Banner blinked at him, looking the very picture of innocence, which was just alarming. "What…?"

Tony grabbed him by his free hand, spun him around and pushed him up against the wall. He held Banner's wrist in his fingers, pressed to the cool metal plate at shoulder level. He could do all this because Banner was barely taller – that had always been one of the things Tony appreciated about him – and damn near skeletal.

"What," Tony repeated into the man's face, "did you put into that kid's glass?"

In this position he was hiding Banner's face from the security cameras and at the same time close enough to hear the whispered answer: "Magnesium citrate."

Tony laughed.

"That will teach him to watch where he's going."

"More likely he'll just _go_ wherever he is," Tony pointed out. _Busted gut_. That was hilarious. His free arm came around Banner's waist and pushed them together at the groin. He pressed his lips to Banner's throat. "I fucking missed you."

Banner didn't exactly relax into the hold, but the underlying current of barely restricted violence switched off. He sighed. "We really need to get back to work."

x

Working with Banner became oddly painful. And not in any of the obvious, expected ways.

Once Banner stopped pussyfooting about his input and they re-discovered their communications frequency, it was like an out-of-body experience. They were locked in the lab, figuring out alien power sources and guzzling terrible Company ersatz coffee, and Tony spent the time in a state of mild arousal – and aware that there was a deadline on this feeling rapidly approaching.

Poking at Banner only got Tony a patronizing brush-off and nearly sparked one of their patented lovers' spats; good thing Rogers insinuated himself into that situation with his aspersions on Tony's sanity, or else there would have been property damage in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny!" Rogers blustered. Then he noticed that on his mission to take Tony down a peg he had actually insulted the very person whose tender feelings he was trying to protect.

It kind of was, though, Tony thought. It _was_ funny. And Rogers was funny, too, with his blue-spandexed ass – more like a displaced video game character than an actual World War II veteran.

And maybe Tony shouldn't have underestimated him, but after that Wizard of Oz moment on the Bridge nobody could be expected to take this guy seriously.

Still, saying anything about breaking into all of SHIELD's secure files straight to Rogers' face wasn't one of Tony's better moments.

Captain Bewildered gaped at him. "Did you just say…?"

Banner sighed and appropriated Tony's packet of blueberries, like he was protecting them from becoming collateral in the ensuing throwdown.

"Jarvis has been running it since I hit the Bridge," Tony replied defiantly. "In a few hours we'll know every dirty secret SHIELD's been hiding-"

"I see why they don't want you around," Rogers concluded, all offended dignity.

Tony snorted. "On the way from the mess hall to here I counted eleven breeches of patent law. This carrier is stuffed with my proprietary tech, and this time I actually know for certain S.I. didn't sell it to SHIELD."

Banner gave him a look that an untrained observed would have interpreted as 'really, Tony?' when in fact what it was conveying came closer to 'so you haven't actually drunk away too many brain cells, huh?'.

"You're on a boat full of liars and thieves and murderers, Cap, and this _one for all, all for one_ mentality you've got is cute in a movie, but in real life just makes you look like an idiot."

Rogers didn't quite flinch, but it was plain to see that Tony had hit him where it hurt.

It didn't come as much of a surprise: the guy had been trying to soak up seventy years of stuff happening as fast as possible, while his only access to information was SHIELD itself. Of course he would be constantly feeling stupid and ignorant and unsure of what to believe.

Too bad he was already this indoctrinated.

"Steve," Banner implored, "doesn't any of this smell funky to you?" He didn't even resemble himself. Just like he had turned into a strange, timid guy in the mess, he had now become the same brand of reluctantly sympathetic as Romanov's working persona.

Tony could have listed half a dozen cues Banner had copied from the woman's act. It was beautiful.

"Just find the cube," Rogers ground out, and took his leave.

Tony and Banner stood side by side, watching the spandex-encased ass until the door fell shut behind it. Then Banner wrested the prod from Tony's hand in one deft movement, jabbed him in the ribs-

"Ouch!"

-and flung it into the wall hard enough to shatter it.

He turned away, planted his palms on the countertop and focused on breathing.

Tony didn't talk. He wasn't sure how he managed, but he just waited, absently counting the dried blueberries spilt on the floor under their feet.

"Your observational skill hasn't really diminished," Banner said softly.

Tony stepped up to him, chest almost touching Banner's back, and tried to gauge the sheer explosive potential of the power coiled inside the man's body. It was heady. "I'm more sober than I've been in a while-"

"And hypervigilant," Banner cut him off, turning and pushing Tony away from himself. "I know a little bit about that these days. Come on."

"Come on where?" Tony inquired, all the more nervous for the certainty that right at this moment, he was ready to follow Banner nearly anywhere.

"You wanted to see what Fury's hiding?" Banner stuck his hand into his back pocket and pulled out an access card. There was a photo on it, so Tony knew the owner wouldn't need it for a few hours yet, due to diarrhea.

"You can't be actually surprised, Stark. I taught this to you-"

"Are you kidding me?" Tony blurted. "I'm just basking in the hotness. I need you to fuck me now." He hadn't meant to say that, but he absolutely meant what he said. The low-key arousal he had been battling for hours peaked all of sudden, and Tony was ready to pull off his clothes and climb Banner. _Literally_.

"Are-"

"Serious, Banner," Tony babbled, reaching out with hands first and then his mouth, pressing insistent kisses to the man's jaw and biting at his lips, "I'm serious; I seriously need you to fuck me, right here, right now-"

-aaand he was sitting on the edge of the counter, bare-assed since his pants had mysteriously disappeared while he was otherwise preoccupied and glad that every single set of his clothes came to him pre-loaded with indispensable paraphernalia, so he could now magick up a condom and pass it to Banner.

"Don't we need to have like, _tantric_ sex or something? I've heard this rumor about how you've got to watch your pulse rate, and let's be honest, I may be a bit of a size queen, but there are limits-"

" _Now_ you worry about that?" Banner asked ironically. That little smirk did things to Tony's insides.

Come to think of it, Banner's fingers were also doing things to Tony's insides. Tony's breath caught, and he clenched his teeth to keep any embarrassing noises unvoiced.

Banner knew him too well, though. He still remembered the right twist, could read the tendons in Tony's throat, knew exactly what he was doing when he let out that little superior chuckle.

"Oh, fuck, _Robert_ -"

A growl and a harsh push down onto the counter made Tony open his eyes. Banner was leaning over him, smirk replaced with a sneer. The hand on Tony's stomach was damn sure going to leave a bruise.

"Don't," Banner snarled, "call me _that_."

"Your eyes are green," Tony pointed out, and came.

They stared at one another for a while; the green leaked away from Banner's irises. Then his eyebrows rose. "Did you seriously just-"

"Yes, yes, fine, I went off like a fucking teenager, sorry not sorry – have you seen yourself?"

Banner correctly interpreted this as a compliment, but it didn't seem to have won Tony any brownie points.

"You begged me to fuck you," he said, and with a judo move or something flipped Tony over onto his front, without apparent care that the edge of the arc reactor clanged against the counter and it smarted like a bitch.

It did give him unrestrained access to Tony's ass, of which he took full advantage.

x

In the wake of the stellar rogering he received, Tony took a short nap, then drank another cup of SHIELD's crime against coffee, and felt more than ready to get back to work.

He loved how they didn't need to talk about it, aside from Banner's "Better now?" delivered with a quick grin, and Tony's heartfelt yet over the top " _Mi pare di rivivere_ ," which Banner predictably laughed off.

Rogers didn't come back and, apparently, he hadn't tattled either, because no SHIELD flunkies turned up to take Tony in for questioning.

"Say when, boysenberry," Tony said once the program was polished to his satisfaction.

"I think I've got it isolated," Banner replied, and slid over a tablet.

JARVIS helpfully rendered the functions graphically. Tony, whose expertise was still only about thirty hours old, found nothing to argue with.

"We ready, Jay?" Tony inquired.

"Set," replied the A.I.

"Go," concluded Banner, exhibiting yet another of the little facets Tony used to adore about him – the ability to take Tony's life as his, to integrate himself so seamlessly that Tony was never left adrift with the nebulous notion of having fucked up but no concrete idea about how.

"Locked," JARVIS confirmed.

"We have a few hours," Banner concluded. "I'm ready to crash-"

"Are you?" inquired Tony. He didn't think so. He knew they _should_ try to sleep, that most likely something big was coming that they would need to be battle-ready for, but right at this moment he didn't want to close his eyes and fall unconscious.

Maybe it was that awareness of the deadline approaching, but he wanted to enjoy his allotment of Banner-time to the fullest. Also, there was the matter of the access card in Banner's pocket and the phantom menace of SHIELD fucking around with Hydra tech.

Besides, in a place where the hosts didn't bother with _catering_ , he didn't expect there would be _accommodations_ provided.

"I've got something for you," Tony said, surprising himself. Yet another of those spur of the moment decisions, but Banner had crashed back into his life like a fucking wrecking ball of a green rage monster, and Tony was only now beginning to remember that he used to have walls built around himself. He didn't even care – although that was probably down to the postcoital brain chemistry.

He tasked JARVIS with keeping watch (it wouldn't do to have Rogers come back in the middle of the presentation) and out of the inner pocket of his jacket pulled out a small cassette. There were lines of tiny cylinders inside, numbered 33 to 64, and a remote control. He proudly presented it to Banner.

"What's this?"

"I call them fuse-blowers," Tony explained. "I mean, they usually just give enough of a jolt to fry some electronics, but pick your device well and you can turn off a block, right?"

"Maybe not on a flying chunk of metal," Banner pointed out dryly.

"Ah, but that's the challenge of it. The engineering of the carrier is – and this is _me_ saying it – pretty fucking solid, so you won't accidentally blow us out of the sky. But you could, say, black-out somebody's office."

"Didn't I hear Fury cursing the techs a while ago?" Banner inquired rhetorically. He put on his glasses and examined one of the FBs up close and personal.

Tony knew he already had him. "I thought it'd be unfair if I kept all the fun to myself. Look at me, sharing. Like a grown up, almost." He didn't say 'I probably won't see you again for years, if ever'. He didn't say 'this is all I have on me aside from my phone and my credit card, and neither of those will do you any good when you go on a run again'.

Banner huffed, like he was smothering a snort. He replaced the FB in the case and slipped the whole set into the pocket of _his_ jacket. "Let's find a place to snooze for a couple of hours."

Tony reached out to pinch his side, got his fingers smacked, and complied.

x

They never had the chance to use the pinched access card; things went to shit faster than Tony expected.

It was ironic. When Tony was giving Banner the FBs, he had honestly expected not to see the man again because Banner would go ghost.

Not because Tony would blow himself up in space with a SHIELD-issued nuke.

He hoped Banner would get away.

x

The Hulk roared.

Tony, unexpectedly, woke up. There was a huge green face looking down at him, although, to be fair, Tony wouldn't really describe that mug as a 'rage-monster'. Annoyed? Absolutely. Monster? Maybe if they were talking about the big guy's dick. Honestly, the most terrifying aspect of this situation was that Tony's temporarily suspended self-preservation instinct sort of came flooding back all at once, and he was suddenly retroactively terrified.

"D-did you kiss me?" he inquired hoarsely. And coughed. And trembled inside the armor like a virgin bride on her wedding night.

The Hulk roared again. Then he shrunk into Banner – just like that, in the middle of the street. The rags of his pants fell victim to hysteresis and flopped down to the rubble covering the pavement.

Tony blinked. And stared. Ogled, actually. Good thing that neither he nor Banner had much shame left. "Oh, wow. Maybe I am actually dead. I could dig this paradise thing. Fig leaves strictly prohibited."

Rogers – somewhere off to the side, but who cared, really? – let out a pained sound.

Banner laughed, in that mean way that he sometimes laughed just before he hauled off and put his fist through somebody's face. Tony hoped it wouldn't be him, because ow – and also _Hulk_ , so _much ow_.

"Up," Bruce ordered. "Unless… Turtle?"

"Excuse you!" Tony huffed, and lifted himself up to a sitting position. "Ow. I'd totally take this off and go streaking with you, Robert, but I've got this piece of tech in my chest that I don't want people to see. Or, you know, photograph." He ignored the hand Captain Stick-up-the-ass was offering him and laboriously clambered to his feet. "Jay, can we disassemble and reassemble, or do I need to extradimensional-portal-proof my armors better?"

"You are a credit to your species, sir," JARVIS replied with a weary sigh. "Reassembly not recommended, but barring undetected problems possible. Please come directly back to the Tower – Mark Seven was not ready-"

"Running, baby," Tony cut in. "Full tilt. Help me take this off."

JARVIS did, keeping his protests unvoiced, because he and Tony both knew what he would have said, and Jay was wily enough to figure out that the less he gave Tony to protest against, the less Tony protested.

Tony took off his jeans and handed them to Banner. Captain Repressed gaped at him like Tony had spontaneously grown another head, and then turned red, as if Tony in boxer-briefs was somehow a more scandalous sight than Banner in the buff – which _almost_ , owing to the pretty obvious bite marks on Tony's thighs, but also _no_. Fortunately the guy stopped blushing and spared himself the coronary after Tony reassembled his armor.

Banner had put on Tony's jeans, and was now holding them up with one hand. Not that Tony was anything even approaching stocky, but he had been relatively healthy lately, and Banner was thin as a damn rake. Or, Tony thought it was rake. Were rakes thin?

You could cut yourself on Banner's hipbones, was his point. He gave it another couple of thoughts. It sounded like a plan for the evening.

"Sir," JARVIS interrupted his daydream, "Agents Romanov and Barton are guarding Loki in the penthouse of the Tower and expecting extraction. Perhaps Captain Rogers would like to join them?"

"You got a lift, Cap?" Tony asked and, because he was actually a genius – concussed genius, but _details_ – he didn't wait for an answer. "Toddle along. You can get back to your minders with the rest of SHIELD's… flying monkeys."

Banner snorted.

Rogers grimaced.

"He _understood that reference_ ," Tony stage whispered to Banner.

"Mr Stark-"

"Chop, chop," Tony cut the Cap off. "Unless you need medevac? Say the word, gramps, and Jarvis will get you an ambulance of your own. I'll spring for a stripper nurse, costume and all. Wait, do ambulances have stripper poles-?"

"I'd blame it on the concussion," Banner remarked, moving alongside Tony at a slow enough pace to accommodate the ambling Captain, "but that's honestly just how his brain works."

"How can you…" Rogers rubbed his face, smearing concrete-dust mixed with sweat all over it. "No offense-"

Which in itself was offensive, Tony thought.

"-but Mr Stark has no business compromising national security. I am grateful for what you have done here – I honestly did not expect you to be that kind of a man – but we won because we worked as a team. It was not solely your credit. Can't you ever acknowledge other people's efforts?"

Huh, sounded like the Captain had a bee in his be-winged cowl. And a chip on his massive, well-formed shoulder to rival Tony's own.

"I guess that's the best I can expect," Tony said to Banner, mock-confidentially.

Banner shrugged. "It's better than what _I_ can expect. How long do you think it'll take them to replace the Cage?"

"Knowing Fury?" Tony would have shrugged, but the armor was in the way. "A couple days."

"Too bad Loki got out," Banner lamented. "I had an FB in the controller."

Tony blinked. "Me too."

Whatever opinion Rogers might have voiced was lost in the background as Tony met Banner's eye and their gazes locked.

Fury had said (and the schematics had confirmed) that if power went out for whatever reason, the whole Cage would have been automatically ejected. Tony really had been amused by the idea of randomly dropping Robin Goodfellow from thirty thousand feet height by flicking a switch.

Then he thought about who else might be locked in that fishbowl of doom, and promptly created a method of sabotaging it at a moment's notice.

Knowing that Banner had gone down the same path – it was uncomfortable. Somehow Tony had managed to forget why he had been so fucked in the head over this man, but it was all coming back. Celine knew what the hell she was singing about.

"…swear to you I'll call you the very second he-"

"Hi, Happy," Tony said over the familiar, harangued voice.

Happy Hogan spun on his heel in the middle of the surprisingly intact lobby of the Stark Tower and gaped at the trio consisting of Tony and his busted up armor, Banner who wore nothing but Tony's jeans that he had to manually help stay on, and Captain America in his Fullspandex Glory.

"He's alive," Happy said into his phone. "No, no, I mean, I'm actually looking at him _right now_. He's _definitely_ alive." He flinched. "Yes, Miss Potts." He extended his hand with the phone to Tony, wearing an expression that clearly said 'better you than me'.

x

"Finally alone!" Tony exclaimed, and flopped onto a couch. "Now that the kids are gone, however shall we entertain ourselves?"

It wasn't his preferred couch, but the penthouse was kind of drafty thanks to Loki's penchant for defenestration, and Tony didn't feel entirely comfortable with the reminder of how many times he had nearly died today.

That wasn't even mentioning Banner's creepy, creepy reaction when he saw the hole in the floor.

Tony hadn't ever before seen Banner go completely, sociopathically blank – like full 'lights on, nobody home' – not even when he had been hopped up and the switch went flick. Tony used to call that weird in- _episode_ version the 'Bizarro Banner', which Banner had hated, even if not enough to actually have it trigger an episode by itself. Still, Robert Banner with his inhibitions turned off might have looked like he was stoned (until he started swinging his fists) but he hadn't gone full-on fugue state.

The blankness was a facet of this new not-Robert guy, and it gave Tony the willies. He had promptly relocated them both a floor down.

"Sleep?" Banner suggested wearily.

Tony could get with that. "Food, though. And booze. All the booze-"

"No," Banner snapped.

"No?"

"No booze."

"I'm not okay with this," Tony protested almost calmly. He knew himself well enough to expect screaming nightmares tonight, but to even get to that stage he was going to need some serious chemical aid.

He was going to make himself literally sick with stress if he didn't take the edge off. That used to be bad enough on its own – now that the arc reactor worsened _every_ discomfort his body threw at him, the mere idea of vomiting made his chest ache.

"I can't drink," Banner stated definitively.

Okay, Tony had been mostly joking with the _bag of weed_ allusion, but in hindsight it sounded stupid. No mind-altering substances for the man who was keeping his Id tightly locked down to prevent staggering property damage. Cool.

"I can't _not_ drink," he pointed out. It was specious, but not untruthful. Also, he saw a simple solution to the conundrum. "So, I'll drink and you won't and everyone will be happy?"

Except not, because Robert didn't like it when Tony got drunk. Bad memories. A few of the bruises Tony had acquired (and one broken rib) had been Robert waking up from a nightmare and reflexively fighting against his father, because his nose had confused _Tony_ for that _shitbucket_.

"If you do, I'm not sleeping with you," Banner concluded. "I can't. If I change…"

Tony nodded. "Separate beds. Or, a couch and a bed. Out of the danger zone." Then, uncomfortable with how desperately _earnest_ he sounded, he added: "Don't leave."

Banner hesitated.

Thought about it.

Then he crossed the room and unmistakably picked the door to Tony's private kitchen – not that there was a lot of still edible food there. "No promises."

x

Screaming nightmares. Good times. Tony sweated through the bedding and ended up dozing in the bath.

Banner, curled up on the couch, slept through it all like a fucking baby.

x

Pepper found Tony on the next day, while Banner was being _debriefed_ by SHIELD. She was, predictably, pissed – at him for being Iron Man and doing Iron Man things, at herself for not picking up her phone when he was potentially dying. Just as predictably, it turned into the kind of clusterfuck that Tony knew from experience would only get exacerbated by seductive efforts.

His usual modus operandi for apologies got derailed by New York being mostly evacuated – i.e. no five star restaurants served, and no shoes emporia were open.

Their desultory dinner consisted of fast food.

Banner actually picked it up on his way and brought it in, startling Pepper in the middle of her long and frankly boring recounting of her trip up from D.C.

"Delivery," Banner said dryly, stepping out of the elevator, carrying bags of kebab and falafel.

"I thought you didn't like people in here," Pepper hissed in Tony's ear, and then turned to Banner with a professional smile. "Thank you, but-"

"Pop a squat," Tony said as she reached for her wallet to tip the presumed delivery boy. Better defuse the situation before Pep's misunderstanding became too obvious and she got embarrassed and viciously vengeful for being 'set up'.

Banner had noticed, of course, but he pretended he didn't. He put on that bashful face he used to make SHIELD agents dismiss him as a potential threat. "I don't want to intrude."

Tony suppressed a snort. "Pep, Dr Banner, infamous biophysicist and a member of the group of weirdos that saved the world yesterday. Banner, Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries."

"Pleased to meet you," the man said with a sort of aggressively non-interesting civility practically screaming 'forget you ever saw me'.

"Likewise," lied Pepper.

They shook hands, all plastic politeness, as if Tony didn't see that just beneath their respective masks they were both secretly glaring at him. That was – let's face it – _also_ predictable.

"I'll get the forks," Banner announced.

Pepper was about to jump in; she might not have been familiar with this particular set of rooms yet, since all her time in the Tower was spent in the penthouse, but she knew that Tony tended to implement his own systems, and she had learnt to navigate them in Malibu. So she was understandably shocked when Banner didn't have to look around but went directly for the cutlery and the dishes – and the napkins.

He knew exactly where everything was.

And Tony would have liked to blame that on last night's dinner and today's breakfast, but the truth was that Banner didn't have a problem last night either. He knew where everything was before he entered.

When Tony looked away from the doorway, he found Pepper scowling at him, mouth pursed and knuckles white with the convulsive grip on her phone. "You slept with him."

She took the incomplete observation, made a faulty assumption, and came to exactly the right conclusion.

"Yes, I did," Tony admitted. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Banner's shadow approach the threshold and then withdraw again.

"Damn me," Pepper muttered, shaking her head, "but I didn't expect this. I really thought you wouldn't cheat. Why did I think that?!"

"Honestly, Pepper, I forgot I wasn't supposed to have sex with anybody."

" _Forgot_ ," she deadpanned.

Tony bit the inside of his cheek and took a deep breath, concentrating on not rolling his eyes. "You've got a lot of rules." He briefly clenched his jaw, reminding himself that he would regret it later if he shrugged now. "It's hard to keep all of them in my mind all the time. Sometime stuff slips."

Pepper stood up and bodily removed herself from the situation. She stopped halfway to the door and returned for the handbag she forgot on the couch cushion. Clearly she yearned to hit Tony with it, but was too self-contained to give in to the impulse. "You cheated on me, and now you're trying to make it sound like it's my fault?!"

"I didn't _cheat_ on you." Tony knew before he said it that his statement wouldn't be accepted. It never was. His view of cheating never really coincided with anybody else's; he could repeat himself _ad nauseam_. "I didn't lie to you, or pretend I didn't have sex with my ex."

"Oh my god." Pepper's face gained that pinkish hue that signified an approaching explosion. "I actually can't tell if you're bullshitting right now, or if you're really that much of an alien."

And this was why Pepper was Tony's favorite. And why he was so attracted to her.

"I'm not an alien, Potts; Thor is an alien."

"Fuck you."

"I'll just take that as a permission-"

"Sure," she agreed. "And take it as me dumping you, too." She righted her jacket, hung her handbag over her shoulder and stood ramrod straight, chin up. "Will that be all, Mr Stark?"

"Have I told you today that you're brilliant?" Tony inquired, standing up too, because this was a conversation they should have face to face.

"At this point, flattery will get your ass kicked," she warned, and walked away.

"That's a given," Tony admitted. "Potts, give yourself a raise."

On her way out of the room – of the floor – and possibly of Tony's personal life, although he wouldn't have bet on it – Pepper snapped: "That's a given, too. You owe me shoes for this, Stark. Lots and lots of shoes…"

The elevator door slid shut.

Tony clapped his hands. "That's it, I guess."

Banner trudged over from the kitchen, set his load onto the table next to the bags of food and sat down. He let his hands fall into his lap and gaped at Tony as if he hadn't ever seen anything as absurd in his life (which was just facetious of a guy who had known Tony when Tony was _nineteen_ ). "Did you just roll twenty on conflict resolution?"

Tony grinned.

"That-" Banner waved his hand in the direction of the door that had swallowed Potts. "-never happens in real life! You cheated on your girlfriend, who is the CEO of your company, and she's just fine with it?"

"She's not fine." Of course she wasn't. Pepper always took it personally when Tony disappointed her. "She's probably crying right now. But she knows what she wants, and she won't let her infatuation with me get in the way of her ambitions. It's why I trust her. And why I dated her."

Banner pulled his feet up onto the couch and settled his forearms on his knees. He watched the paraphernalia on the table as if he expected the forks to bite him.

Tony attempted to gauge whether he would lose a hand if he tried to touch him. It didn't seem as if the SHIELD interrogation had gone especially badly. Tony had half-expected that he would need to break the Hulk out of some creepy medical facility.

Instead Banner had come back on his own, out of his own will, un-coerced, and had the wherewithal to pick up Tony's and Pepper's order on the way.

"Um?" Tony inquired. At Banner's patronizing look he added: "Dinner?"

"Look," Banner sighed, "I know I am a bad person, but I am trying not to be."

"Why?" Tony asked, honestly stumped. What did 'bad' actually mean? People were different, based on some weird settings in their brains that no one had mapped yet – they could change, sure, but only if those settings changed first. It was a matter of motivation. Paradigms. That sort of thing.

This was too philosophical for him.

"So I'd hate myself less?" Banner suggested pragmatically.

That Tony could understand. "Hating yourself isn't really useful for anything. And it feels bad."

"Right." Banner let his feet back down onto the floor and reached for the food. "No self-hatred if we can help it. You and I cheated on your girlfriend but, hey, neither of us meant to hurt her. We just really didn't remember that she existed."

It took Tony a minute to figure out why Banner sounded so sarcastic.


	2. Cheery Domesticity

Chapter Two: Cheery Domesticity

x

Tony's own debriefing with SHIELD went very, very badly.

He smothered the paperwork agent assigned to him under an avalanche of relentless quippage, unfollowable digressions and a few interspersed threats of legal action against her employers. He almost got her to break down, but then she was rescued by her catsuited comrades.

Rather than risk the mental health of another agent, Fury himself took the seat opposite Tony, glared, and said: "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't cuff you to Loki and let Thor take you to Asgard."

"Because then Pepper would be in charge. She doesn't like you now – wait till she hears about Coulson's death. She's going to take SHIELD apart, dime by dime." Tony placidly stared back.

He had saved the world recently. There was _footage_. Fury owed him, and Tony could actually prove it this time.

"I hear tell she does not like you much either lately," Fury pointed out.

It was all Tony could do not to laugh. Pepper had never really liked him, per se, but she knew how he worked, and she knew what she could expect from him. There was trust between them, even if it wasn't the nebulous, romanticized type of limitless trust that people extolled, as if that was an actual thing that happened.

No, Pepper and Tony had had a social contract – he was found in breach, so it was voided, as per the pertinent clause.

If Fury thought he could play them against one another, Tony was going to have a good laugh in the near future.

He leaned back in his uncomfortable chair and crossed his legs. "You had questions, Director. Not that I mind wasting a day lounging around SHIELD offices and drinking sludge that does not actually pass for coffee no matter how hard it tries, but you may not be entirely happy with the bill. I am, after all, on the clock, and my consultation fee-"

"See that you subtract the cost of Agent Perry's therapy-"

"You sent her to meet opposition she wasn't qualified to handle. Wasn't that the exact same thing that happened to Coulson? Tsk. Shoddy leadership, Director."

There was movement behind the door, and Tony half-expected a gun-toting bodyguard to burst inside and threaten him with perforation for mouthing off to Fury.

That didn't happen. What did happen instead was Fury offering Tony a new contract.

x

"Stark!"

Tony halted, swayed by Captain America's dulcet tones rising above the din of the SHIELD building's lobby. He was in a mildly homicidal mood – honestly, the only reason why Fury was still alive was that Tony didn't feel like being shot by the bastard's bevy of bodyguards – and a confrontation with the paragon of American willful blindness was not going to end well. For anyone present.

"Can we postpone this powwow, Cap? I'd love to stay and chat – actually no, that's a lie, I'd love to ditch – so how about you sit on this one and we'll set up an appointment sometime in a not too close future?" Tony put on his sunglasses in the middle of the monologue, despite the relative darkness of the hall.

Rogers came to a halt in front of him, transitioning from the one-two, one-two march directly into parade rest.

"Are you in a hurry?"

"Yes," Tony blurted. "Absolutely in a _terrible_ hurry. I'm hurrying – in fact, I'm already out of here-"

"It won't take more than a couple of minutes – surely whatever _very important_ matter you need to attend can wait that long."

Tony frowned. People who wanted things from him either paid him exorbitant amounts of money or _refrained from sarcasm_. It seemed as if Rogers hadn't yet noticed that Tony wasn't a soldier under his command.

"Fury has the number for my office," he said, meeting the Cap's eye over the top of his shades. "Ask for it. Set up a meeting with the P.A.-"

"Stark, this would take far less time if you could just stop interrupting for a moment and hear me out-"

Tony wasn't nearly so focused on the super soldier in front of him that he would have missed the crowd behind Rogers' back parting for a newcomer and subsequently falling quiet. He had apparently taken too long needling Fury's hired help and explaining to the Director himself what would happen to anyone trying to extort Tony Stark – spoiler alert, he illustrated the explanation with pictures of a Ten Rings base in Afghanistan taken in 2008. _Boom_.

"-involved in the Initiative, and we are agreed that you cannot continue breaking the cohesion of the team," Rogers finished whatever he was nattering on about.

Tony hadn't been listening, but he hadn't needed to. He had caught enough. 'Cohesion', Cap had said, like a sad little well-coached drone. And 'we'. What 'we'? SHIELD? The SHIELD-nominated Avengers?

Tony didn't know Barton, beyond the fact that he had been important enough to Coulson that Coulson got himself killed for the guy, like a complete idiot. He didn't really know Romanov, either, but a couple of months of their perfunctory acquaintance convinced him that he didn't want to.

And Rogers? Brainwashed, baby.

"It's funny," Tony mused, torn between pity and the urge to mock, "I am one hundred percent sure that you never spoke to Howard the way you speak to me, because you didn't mysteriously fall out of his plane somewhere over the German trenches." He huffed at the expression on Cap's face and talked over his feeble attempt at protesting. "Yes, it _is_ funny. You start out by comparing me to him, and then treat me like something you scraped off your shoe? That tells me a lot about you."

Mostly it told him that Steven Rogers was another one of the mass of people not worth his time, much less actual effort.

There weren't many people left in the lobby by now, and those that were seemed to be watching the scene and unwilling to interfere. Tony was fine with this; he was a trained entertainer.

Incidentally, so was Captain Rogers. It was shaping up to be a good show.

"We have got off on the wrong foot, Mr Stark," Cap implored, "but if you are to be a member of this team-"

"Hey, whoa!" Tony raised his hands, palms out. "Who said anything about being a member of any teams?"

Maybe, once, Tony would have gone along with the sales pitch – but Pepper wasn't here to blackmail him into playing nice with the government, and Tony honestly couldn't see why he should roll over for an idiot who thought a man's worth could be measured by his willingness for self-sacrifice.

"Look, I came to pull your flaming asses out of the fire because Agent Agent made the eyes at Pep, and she made the eyes at me, but I'm not so pathetic that I would sell my soul for a handful of fake friends. You go on playing soldiers, Capsicle. I'll go back to being awesome, that suits me much better than getting ordered around by a guy whose idea of intel is 'I've seen the footage' and 'it runs on some kind of electricity'. Face it, Cap, unless you've spent an exciting night watching the _footage_ of my sex tapes on the internet, you have no clue who I am. Let me help you here: I'm the guy not fond of the idea of lying down on any wires." Much less so a behemoth like Rogers could crawl over Tony's humanly fragile back.

Captain America turned out to be just as susceptible to Tony Stark's patented verbal barrage as any other self-important schmuck.

Credit where it was due, though, he recovered pretty fast. Not that he had understood a quarter of what Tony had just told him. The dope simply picked what he wanted to hear and reacted to it from his high horse.

"Agent Coulson died for-"

"Whatever he died for was his decision," Tony cut in. Oh, look, a radical thought. " _Did_ you notice? He didn't get _ordered_ by Fury to put himself bodily in Loki's way. Which I, personally, also find kinda funny. Whatever, Captain. I've got another piece of news for you: I'm a civilian. I didn't volunteer; I didn't get drafted, and if you try to do anything of the sort-" Tony briefly stepped closer to the guy, not quite crazy enough to believe that his admittedly vertically challenged self could have an intimidating effect, but simply to make it clear that he wasn't intimidated either, no matter how hard the Cap had polished his shield and how strictly he had parted his hair that morning. "-I'll give you a crash-course on the workings of the contemporary American legal system. Cheers."

"It says in your file you went after terrorists. By yourself."

Tony had to admit that at a glance it might have looked like he had volunteered for the 'good fight', but that was only because Rogers wasn't familiar with how billionaires worked.

"That's just a hobby. Someone crotchets; someone plays golf; someone hunts. And if you're a member of one of the really exclusive hunting clubs, the game runs on two feet and occasionally waves guns around."

Rogers lifted his chin so high it was practically pointing straight up. Once he judged that everyone present noticed he was being more restrained and forgiving than could be reasonably expected anyone, he did an about-face, discovered Banner standing there and watching him, tried to recoup, and finally strode off toward the staircases.

Leaving Tony brokenhearted in his wake, because how could anyone live after _the_ Captain America gave them the silent treatment?

"You still get rambley when you're mad," Banner muttered, watching Tony with rueful fondness.

"He's a dick," Tony pointed out.

Banner rolled his eyes. "You know, Tony… I actually know you a little, but for a moment there I believed you."

Tony walked by his side, letting himself be led to the parking lot. "You think I never participated in a hunt on a human? Aside from going all _Iron Man_ on some terrorists, I mean."

Banner considered the possibility with some seriousness. Eventually, just as they stepped into the glare of the afternoon sun (Banner squinting, Tony glad for his eyewear) he said: "…yes. Yes, I think you never did."

Tony shrugged. "Okay, that's possible. But, honestly, a lot of my memory of the past two decades is just blank space, so I might have. Keys?"

"I'm driving," Banner informed him, and ignored the resultant pout with the aplomb of someone who had built up years' worth of resistance to it. "You never went hunting, Tony Stark. I know what you enjoy; I know how you act when you're drunk, and when you're high… as if anyone had the power to drag you that far away from your workshop."

Tony took the passenger seat and watched his old-new friend as he settled himself behind the wheel as if he had been driving cars worth half a fortune all his life.

Tony watched New York pass them by. Blocks and alleys and shops and coffee shops, all filled with anonymous, interchangeable, human-shaped props all mixed up into this fleeting, shallow impression of the mass of 'public' that shelled out for Tony's income. He was glad they were alive.

Pepper kept a close eye on S.I.'s bottom line, and if Manhattan had gotten nuked, she would have taken the stock price drop out of Tony's hide.

"Now I'm nervous," Banner said maybe five minutes later.

"Gimme a break, _Doctor_. I've just been wrung by SHIELD; I need a little quiet time. I'm not plotting anything too explosive."

Banner took the opportunity provided by the red light to lean over and kiss Tony.

It wasn't a very nice kiss. It felt more like a warning to not fuck up too badly.

Tony sank deeper into the leather seat, moved his wrist and watched as the face of his watch reflected the sunlight at different angles. He caught a cyclist in the eye, but the guy just squinted and pedaled on. He mulled over his most recent argument with Nick Fury.

"Did Fury offer you club membership?" he asked after a while.

Banner remained quiet, eyes darting to one side mirror, then to the other.

"Did you take it?" Tony inquired.

He didn't think so, but he wasn't sure. Maybe Banner was actually tired enough of running that he would settle for the lesser evil. Or he was confident enough that he could pull one over SHIELD if he needed to…

"I told him my answer would depend on yours," Banner admitted, "and your silence doesn't fill me with confidence. Should I hit the ground running?"

The thing was, Fury did try that gambit. Banner was a bit of an obvious soft spot for the Iron Man – of course SHIELD would try striking at it. But, as luck would have it, Fury's minions hadn't yet uncovered the whole sordid history, so they didn't know how vulnerable that spot truly was, and Tony had managed to head them off.

For the moment.

He would have to get on it. Get Pepper's school of shark-lawyers on it, too.

"No," Tony said decisively. "Stay. I won't lie in one bed with SHIELD, but they don't want me as their enemy either."

"Sentiment? From someone pragmatic like you?" Banner inquired dubiously.

He knew how Tony felt about suspending sound business sense for something as nebulous as feelings. Maybe Tony was being a hypocrite. And maybe it was a matter of principle.

Tony would borrow a strategy from Aunt Peg and plant himself at that line like a bloody tree. No government agency was going to extort Tony Stark, much less with the freedom and constitutional rights of his lover.

"What was it you used to say?" _Robert_ , Tony wanted to add but refrained. "Once in a blue moon shit doesn't happen… but I wouldn't rely on it."

Banner echoed the second part of the sentence together with him.

Neither of them laughed.

x

They worked together peacefully for three weeks. Okay, to be specific, for nineteen days, but Tony was still proud of himself.

Tony managed to finish enough projects to earn an emailed commendation from Pepper – a peace offering that he wasn't sure was entirely deserved, but which he cheerfully accepted nonetheless. Banner had helped with the inventing process although, in hindsight, Tony had no clue how much. He was so used to JARVIS' input that he didn't notice if an idea came from outside of his brain, so long as it gelled.

JARVIS would have known the exact percentages, but Tony wasn't interested enough to ask. He had muted JARVIS after the third reminder that they should take a break for food. What were they – preschoolers? They would eat when they were hungry.

Banner's stomach growled. Dummy wheeled over with a smoothie in his claw.

Banner accepted it, thanked the bot, and stared at the cup of grayish green goo with dismay.

Tony fished a nutrient bar out of the 'nails-screws-rivets' drawer and tacitly exchanged it for the goo. A sniff test confirmed that this time there was no motor oil involved, so he drank it. Besides, if there had been anything too toxic in the mixture, JARVIS would have overridden the 'mute' command to warn him… seeing as it wasn't an actual command, but more of Tony throwing a tantrum and JARVIS giving him the time to cool off. A gentlemen's agreement, so to say, allowing for the fact that no gentlemen were involved.

"Not that I'm not fine with living on goop and nutritional supplements," said Banner, "but I've been craving curry."

Tony grunted into the half-empty cup, typing one-handed. The New York power grid was inefficient and the losses of energy staggering. He hoped whoever had planned it had been fatally electrocuted.

"No," Banner replied to someone that wasn't Tony (JARVIS, presumably), "I don't know where that misconception comes from. Environmental consciousness does _not_ equate vegetarianism."

"We talking carbon footprints now?" Tony mumbled, setting the almost drained cup down. The bitter-sour taste of the smoothie in the back of his throat didn't significantly differ from the taste of bile. A low level headache completed the semblance of a hangover. He felt ready for another day of binge-science.

"Just because you manage to offset your karma on pure accident, it does not mean the rest of us can take absolution for granted," Banner muttered.

Tony gave him the evil eye. The headache helped in this endeavor.

"Sir, you _are_ aware that you have not slept for fifty-one hours, aren't you?" JARVIS inquired, proving one of the points Tony had thought of and then shelved. Whichever one it was. Whatever.

"Pep's proud," Tony pointed out.

Hah! See Jay come up with a counter-argument to that.

"Your past attempts to heal depression with workaholism have been _so_ successful," Banner mocked.

Tony ignored him.

Or, would have ignored him, except then his laptop gave out an unhealthy buzzing sound. His screen flickered, winked out, and a moment later lit up again. When Tony touched the keyboard, it gave him a jolt.

"You asshole," he growled.

Banner, distanced to the opposite side of the lab counter, looked disappointed. He shrugged. "You didn't expect me not to bug your computer when you gave me these, right?" He let one of the FBs peek out between his fingers, before he made it disappear like a goddamn third-rate magician.

"You didn't expect me not to bug-proof my own laptop, right?" Tony mocked in return.

He should have expected this, honestly. Banner got off on control, had gotten off on control even before control became the sole purpose of his life.

(Had gotten off on having control wrested from him, too, but nowadays Tony was kind of leery of trying that. So much _ow_.)

"I'm going to sleep," Banner announced. "By which I mean-"

" _Mi cama es tu cama_ ," Tony assured him. "I'll finish this and come find you. _Come_ being the operative word."

"You wish," Banner retorted. He did pause by Tony's side on his way out for just long enough to lean into him, squeeze his nape and cup his hip, thumb brushing just the right spot in the hollow of Tony's hipbone.

Tony shuddered, but a hard-on and science were never mutually exclusive, so he let Banner go and told JARVIS to bring up the man's thesis on the anti-electron collisions on one of the free holos.

x

All good things had to come to an end, though, so on the twentieth day Tony woke up to a cold, empty bed, a brand new tasklist in his inbox, and an email from Rhodey that read less like 'you free this weekend? 'cause I'm free this weekend' and more like 'Tony, you're doing things and not telling me and last time this happened I had to become a superhero on your behalf and the time before I nearly took a demotion 'cause you stopped manufacturing weapons' whine.

Tony was adlibbing very, very heavily here, but he had known Rhodey as an engineering student, as a dutiful son, as a cadet and as an officer. He could fill in Rhodey's side of the dialogue if he concentrated hard enough, but he tried not to, seeing as that way lay self-recrimination.

"Jay?" he said. "Babe, we both know it pours when it rains, so lay it on me."

There was a protracted while of silence, not because the A.I. needed it to come up with a response, but simply because he liked watching Tony stew.

"I take that to mean that you wish to hear the bad news first, sir," JARVIS said smarmily.

"That depends," Tony replied in a fit of uncharacteristic self-awareness. "If Banner skipped town, I'm liable to do something stupid, and I usually get destructive when those urges hit. Proceed with caution."

He knew how to deal with sleeping alone in a big bed.

He hated that point when he woke up, and there was another body's impression already cooled next to him. It felt like a rejection, and Tony had some serious issues regarding promises people gave him being broken.

"Doctor Banner is in his laboratory, sir. He appeared to be in minor distress when he exited your bedroom, but has since calmed down considerably."

Tony wondered how Banner did it. He would ask JARVIS, but the chances that JARVIS would tattle on Tony asking to Banner (whether he would actually answer Tony's question or refuse to) were far too high to risk it. Sometimes Tony regretted making the A.I. quite that independent.

Then he remembered that in making JARVIS somehow lesser he would not only have abused a thinking being, but also diminished his own creation.

"I love and hate how perfect you are," he concluded, and stopped by the kitchen.

"Your coffee is ready, sir," JARVIS snarked.

Tony grabbed the mug from under the drip and shuffled toward the elevator. A quick check in the mirror on the cabin's back wall confirmed that he was, in fact, wearing pants. He was even wearing a tank top. If anyone wanted to be offended by his bedhead or otherwise his general lack of grooming, they were welcome to stick their offence up their ass.

"How's the penthouse, Jay?" he inquired idly.

"Pending safety inspections it is ready for habitation, sir. Some of the decoration Miss Potts chose has been unsalvageable, although I would recommend not contacting her about interior design for your place of living just yet. Perhaps Dr Banner may be inclined to venture an opinion?"

The elevator came to a halt; its door slid open.

"He ventures his opinions alright," Tony replied. "But I don't think they extend to the color of my drapes."

"Only in the most figurative of senses, sir," said the world's most sarcastic robot butler, and prevented Tony's retaliation by opening the door to Banner's lab.

Tony stood in the doorway and surveyed his lover's kingdom. Well, fiefdom. Tony was still the king around here, and Banner was a favored vassal. Like Potts, except less likely to conspire with the other vassals and empty out the treasury while Tony wasn't looking.

There was a lot of chrome around the hall. Bits and bobs and thingamajigs and doohickeys and whatsits and various devices of dubious morality. It didn't seem like enough to build a huge walking spider out of it, but if Banner chose to ever conquer the world, he wouldn't go about it the steampunk way anyway.

"Hey, Kermit," Tony spoke, wandering in, examining the writing on the discarded boxes and other packaging materials, which formed a sprawling pile alongside an otherwise bare wall. "We both know I suck at squishy sciences, but even I know when the equipment you're asking for has nothing to do with your research proposals. Have a little faith in me, okay?"

Banner sighed. His shoulders slumped. He took off his glasses, reflexively cleaned them with the hem of his shirt, and then set them down on top of his keyboard. He still didn't turn. "I guess you want the other research proposal now?"

Tony came up behind him, stood on his toes to catch a glimpse of his screen – just a glimpse before JARVIS minimized the window, so he only caught an ongoing exchange of emails with the annoyingly non-descriptive subject 'Re: Hi'. "I'm just asking. Because I'm curious. I told you I'd equip you a lab according to your wishes, and I'm not backing out." He kissed the side of Banner's neck. "Indulge me?"

"You aren't giving me much space, here," Banner noted.

"On the contrary. I'm giving you a lot of space." Tony spread his arms, indicating the humongous room they stood in, which was as of now completely at Banner's disposal.

Asshole move, maybe, but the fact was that Tony had asked, not demanded, and he had not attached any conditions to Banner telling him no. Granted, Banner had his own issues, his own paranoia (justified – they _were_ after him), and it made complete sense that he was looking for the clockwork behind every magic trick and for the trap behind every bait.

As if Banner's contribution to S.I.'s portfolio weren't well worth funding his private research. As if Tony had ever been stingy when it came to the people he actually _liked_.

"That's rather the point," Banner said, proving that Tony had read him right.

"You don't _have_ to tell me," Tony pointed out.

"Oh, you've gotten better at this."

Meaning that Tony had improved at lying, not that he had improved as a human being, which wasn't entirely unfair, but wasn't at all nice either. Also, Banner was _wrong_.

Tony wasn't going to argue to point, though. If _Robert_ wanted to be like that-

"Tony, I want to know what was done to me." Banner was not looking at him. He could have been – could have put on that imploring 'look at me I was an abused orphan' look that wasn't even a lie, except for how Banner had devised it and practiced in front of the mirror until he had it down to science.

Tony had seen it in action; it could inspire sympathy in a marble statue.

Banner didn't use it. His head was down, eyes trained on his hands, which were opening and closing as if he was trying to grab a fistful of air. "I survived a lethal dose of radiation, and let's face it – the precedents for such survival are Johann Schmidt and Steven Rogers."

"You think you were given the serum, too?" Tony extrapolated, and then cursed himself for being a damn idiot.

"It's the best theory I have."

Of course Banner had been given the serum. How had this not been obvious? Ross could crow about his gamma bomb research all he wanted to – when his two most prominent scientists were _bio_ physicists, there was something rotten in the United States of America. Gamma bomb Tony's well-shaped ass.

Fucking Ross of all people had gotten away with a bootleg supersoldier program right under Tony's – and SHIELD's – nose?

"Were there others?" Tony asked. "There should have been others. Ross didn't have the sorts of budget constraints Erskine had, no way he would have limited himself to one-"

"Not Ross," Banner muttered.

Tony froze. Blinked. Not Ross?

"In hindsight, I think Ross let me into the program because he thought I _already_ had the serum," Banner explained. His arms came around his chest and fingers clutched onto triceps in a compulsive self-embrace. "I thought- He obviously hated me. I thought Betty had talked him around. But she had tried before, and nothing worked, until one day he just sent a contract, out of blue. I should have known something was wrong, but I just… wanted it so much."

So much that he had convinced himself it was fine, that he finally got a lucky break, that he was just being paranoid. He had willfully blinkered himself.

Elizabeth Ross' presence probably helped a lot in that particular endeavor.

Which gave Tony an idea about the identity of the mysterious sender of those _Re: Hi_ emails.

"Yeah, okay," he said. "Research proposal accepted. _But_."

However much he hated the idea of Banner collaborating with _any_ Ross on his project, he was first and foremost a scientist, so he wasn't going to put his foot down there. He was going to be smarter about it, and if either of these two had a problem, Tony was prepared to go _Iron Man_ on their asses, too.

Banner looked at him expectantly (and that was a bit of a mindfuck, because Tony was fairly sure that any other person in existence would have already assumed the worst, so the modicum of faith felt heady).

"Jarvis," Tony said, "get two sets of gag orders and have both Banner and his secret colleague sign them. Whatever they discover – I don't want it to get out. To _anyone_."

Banner grimaced. "Tony-"

"See you later, Casanova. I'm in meetings all afternoon, so maybe dinner? Dinner." He waved his hand and sauntered off back the way he came.

"Tony-"

"Nuh-uh, contract breach, tootsie pop." The elevator doors closed on whatever protest Banner was about to mount.

Tony wasn't in fact nearly as jealous as he made it seem. He was too busy thinking about Banner's father. They had an agreement about not mentioning their fathers aloud, so he didn't ask, but it was getting too hard to keep his mouth shut. It was a pretty reasonable assumption. Also, if it had been someone else, Banner would have clarified.

"Get it out before you bust a battery," Tony said wearily.

"I have contacted Miss Potts, Sir," JARVIS replied primly. "She assures me that it is absolutely no problem to keep you busy for an afternoon, and seems delighted to hear that you have decided to venture out of your self-imposed exile."

"Traitor."

"I am merely lending credence to your story." JARVIS was an asshole. "By the time you are done, I shall have the file on Brian Banner's research ready for you."

JARVIS was an asshole, but Tony didn't want to imagine his life without him.

x

Tony refused to let the business world's odiousness bring him down, so he ducked into Pepper's office for a breather.

It occurred to him why this might not be sound strategy only after the door fell shut behind him. He had two seconds of hope while Pepper's presence in her office remained Schrödingered, before she dashed it by speaking: "And now I wonder why I ever wanted to date you."

Tony pulled himself away from the door and faced the firing squad. That was, faced his ex-girlfriend cum CEO.

She looked up from her work at him, part-amused, part-exasperated.

"I'm good in bed and it solved the plus-one problem," Tony replied, wagering at least a patch of his skin on the fact that Pepper's familiar expression meant that she had decided to pretend like their whole trainwreck of a romantic relationship had never happened. Aside from acknowledging that it did, like adult people ought to.

"It took me by surprise," Pepper said, beckoning Tony to sit down into one of the visitors' chairs. "You laughed in the faces of the socialites who tried."

And a lot of them had tried. Models and actresses and celebrities, journalists and bored trophy wives and corporate spies.

Tony sat down, scratched at his goatee and shrugged. "It's not as if I had ever been all that interested in any of them." Interested in fucking them, maybe – but mostly interested in just having sex. All those people were largely interchangeable and insignificant. If anyone had been anything but itch-scratching, Tony would have called them back.

"But you are interested in Banner?"

Tony could have given a hundred glib answers to that question, but Pepper was one of the very few people whom he actually trusted, and that trust was based on _understanding_ , so it was good business practice to tell her the truth. Or, whatever was close enough to the truth.

It was an emotional matter, and as such frustratingly nebulous.

"Pepper, if you asked me if I had ever been in love, this man would be the reason why I'd have to stop and think about the answer." He still wasn't sure if the answer was yes or no, but if not for Banner, Tony wouldn't have had any reason to believe himself capable of that sort of emotional investment.

Pepper regarded him with a dissecting laser gaze. Tony took it. He had not lied to her – there was nothing she could find that he would have been ashamed of.

Then she rolled her eyes. "This is so messed up, Tony. Your boyfriend whom you haven't seen for twenty years unexpectedly turns up in the middle of a potentially cataclysmic event, and somehow you're now both superheroes expected to save the world."

Tony considered this summary. He wanted to protest the superhero moniker – not so much the 'super' part, that was a given, but he still refused to be labeled a 'hero' – but otherwise it was on the nose. "It does sound like a comic book plot if you put it like that."

Pepper took a sip of her agave juice and set the glass back down onto her desk. A Newton's Cradle clacked irritatingly on the shelf behind her. Tony would never understand how she could tolerate that thing in the room with her when she was working.

"I've decided that this was an event neither of us could have foreseen. _Vis maior_." She pursed her lips and seemed to swallow whatever she was about to say. "He saved your life."

Tony shrugged. He had _seen the footage_ , so he knew that the Hulk had caught him, but he didn't remember it. And it happened _after_ the sex – well, after the first instance of the sex – although Pepper didn't know that, so it was easier to just let her think that Tony had given in to the post-battle victory-induced high when he had tumbled into bed with Banner.

It made for a nicer picture, and Pepper seemed so calm that it made no sense to upset her further with TMI. Refraining from TMI wasn't actual lying.

"I'm glad he did," she concluded. "You dying would be hell on the stock market."

"Also, you wouldn't have a new generation of StarkPhone to present to the Board next week," Tony pointed out. He pressed send.

The email arrived in Pepper's inbox with a quiet ping.

She turned to her laptop, opened the first of the attached files and, without looking at Tony, said: "That will be all, Mr Stark."

x

The picture of Banner cooking dinner was almost the perfect replica of the picture of Banner doing science in his lab. He stood at the counter, with his back to Tony, hand movements translating into shifts of his back muscles.

He seemed to be just as focused – and just as relaxed, as long as he was in his own space.

An animal part of Tony was overjoyed at watching Banner so at home in Tony's home – in his lab or his kitchen, it didn't really matter.

He stepped up behind Banner and put his hands on the man's hips.

Banner didn't instinctively react the way he once would have. It was maybe a little bit disappointing. Still, they were different men now (even if Banner kept curling in on himself exactly as he used to) and the sensation must have been quite dissimilar as well. Tony was a little more solid these days; he must have smelled different, too, and Banner didn't fit against him in the same ways anymore.

Banner tried to fake it a couple of seconds later. He leaned back, and pretended that the edge of the arc reactor wasn't digging painfully into his shoulder blade.

"You've been gone for a while," he pointed out with careful neutrality – which just meant that he had to try very hard not to sound accusing – as he finished chopping up a potato.

Tony ignored the accusation. He pulled Banner's shirt out of his pants, stuck his hand under it and finger-combed through the coarse hair of his treasure trail, delighting in the quiver of the flesh beneath his touch. "I jerked off over your research proposal. Like… ten times."

Banner let out a whisper-soft curse and let himself relax into Tony's hold for real. His head fell back onto Tony's shoulder; he swallowed compulsively and shivered in response to Tony's feather-light caress. "How are you real?" His fingers tightened around the handle of the knife.

"I think the universe probably really fucked up somewhere," Tony retorted, grinning.

It worked. It was going to work. He just had to be clever about it, and maybe a little patient, too. He couldn't _wrest_ control from Banner, not anymore, but he could _persuade_ him to hand it over.

The knife's blade glinted with every shift Banner made, up to and including his deep breaths. He was keeping as tight a hold on himself as he had on the weapon.

"Get this," Tony suggested, inspired by Pepper's proclamation, "we're _superheroes_."

Banner started soundlessly laughing; his shivering in Tony's arms turned into shakes. His hand shot out and deposited the knife on top of the cutting board, before he went boneless, letting Tony carry his weight. His hands fell, palms encountering and fitting themselves to Tony's thighs.

"I was so used to being _nobody_ ," Banner said raggedly. "In fact, if the topic of research grants came up, it was practically a competition who could pretend the hardest that I was not there."

Tony bit his earlobe. Not hard, just enough to confirm that he was listening and – although he didn't really empathize, since he had never suffered a shortage of funds – he understood.

"It was a terrifying moment when I realized that no matter how far I'd run, they would always find me and come after me."

They used to have opposite problems when they were young. Tony was meanly amused to have Banner join him on this side – on the side of the notoriously exploitable and the endlessly pursued. "Yes. They do that. They hunt."

"What I don't understand is how they got to you," Banner said. His eyes were closed, and he seemed to luxuriate in the connection between their bodies despite its relative chastity.

Tony relented and let the atmosphere of intimacy goad him into talking. He probably wanted to talk about it, just needed the excuse Banner had obligingly handed him. "They caught me at a bad time. Heavy metal poisoning. I wasn't exactly at my best."

"Shit." Banner grimaced, although his eyes remained closed.

"But then they forgot that I won't exactly remain hooked on their paltry bait after I got better. I walked it off. Once my head cleared, I was actually a little embarrassed for how easy I made it for them." And he had made it very easy.

Just the Rushman ploy itself – Pepper might have legitimately picked a promising girl from Legal as her P.A., but not a girl that had worked there for less than a month, no matter _how_ promising she seemed. Not over a heap of candidates far more experienced and well-established within the company. Really, you didn't allow access to top-level management's confidential information to an employee that was still within their trial period.

Pepper and Tony had just been curious about who sent her and what she was after.

"Tony…" Banner pressed the edge of his shoulder blade against the rim of the arc reactor. "With this kind of toxication… I don't even know what to say here. Just, I'm amazed – and glad, but really just stunned – that you're even alive."

"Surviving's my shtick, porcupine," Tony returned easily. His thumb drew a circle around Banner's navel and playfully dipped in. He didn't think they would get to dinner any time soon. "Out of curiosity, how did they get to _you_?"

"To hear them tell it, they've been stalking me across three continents before they decided to bring me in. Knew me well enough to play me. No fuss, minimal risk of collateral damage – all in all a very tasteful abduction."

"Romanov?"

"Romanov."

"For me too. At least, most of the field work. They brought in Fury for the cinch."

"At first I thought they brought _you_ in for _my_ cinch. But it looks like they honestly didn't know."

"After years of stalking us both… for shame."

"To be fair, I don't think we've so much as mentioned one another since… twenty years ago?"

"I totally credited one of your papers in one of mine. Jarvis?"

"Since 1989 you have credited Dr Banner's various works in three of your articles and one thesis, sir. You have also referenced his work in your counter-proposal against the use of nuclear warheads in Af-"

"See?" Tony cut in. "I meant it-" _Robert_ , "-your work _is_ unparalleled." He didn't want to think about Afghanistan. He absolutely refused to _talk_ about Afghanistan. At all. He had thought that the Jericho was a more elegant solution warfare-wise than deploying nuclear weapons, which at one point had been far more likely to happen than the public would ever know.

He sort of regretted getting involved sometimes, considering how that overture ended… but then again not.

It was just a bunch of emotional mire and he wasn't going to get into it.

He tugged on Banner to get him to turn around and pressed their mouths together. Banner's tasted tea-bitter, which wasn't nearly as pleasing as whisky-bitter, but their bodies were already sensitized and thrumming with incipient pleasure, so he pushed deeper, enjoying the slickness of Banner's tongue – faux reluctantly held back and then darting forward in a sneak counter-attack.

Tony didn't so much fight him for control of the kiss as let him decide that he didn't want that control after all. The groundwork he had laid worked wonders for keeping Banner pliant and suggestible.

They hadn't ever done this before.

Tony suddenly found himself burning with voracious hunger for this – for Banner's body so relaxed and accepting, for Banner's mind present in all its brilliance yet solely in observational capacity. He wanted to take his time with this and make it good. Make it so good that Banner would want to come back for more. Maybe even _ask_ for more.

"I'm hungry," the man protested when Tony started maneuvering them in the direction of the couch.

" _Priorities_ , Banner, for fuck's sake-"

He started laughing again, at Tony or at the not entirely intentional pun, it didn't matter. What mattered was that he didn't argue anymore and went along with whatever Tony wanted.

 _Whatever_ he wanted.

The terrifying thing about this turn of events was that, afterwards, Tony realized that Banner had actually never _stopped_ being in perfect control.


	3. Breaking Down

Chapter Three: Breaking Down

x

"Did it hurt when you fell from Heaven?"

Tony bit the inside of his cheek to keep from giggling, and retorted, gravely as he could: "That was a month ago! Keep up, Rhodes!"

Tony had missed Rhodey, but missing Rhodey was a fact of life for him ever since he had finished his Doctorate and left Rhodey behind to the trials and tribulations of his Masters. Rhodey's own fault for not getting the studying done fast enough.

Rhodey laughed, playfully punched Tony in the ribs and put and arm around his shoulders, effectively detaining him. "Nobody can keep up with you. C'mon, you've got to give me the dirt. Was that the actual Captain America?"

Tony shrugged. "Whoever he is, he's a big enough dickwad that he could have competed with Howard. Chances are he's the real deal."

"I can't believe you met the real Captain America. I can't believe you didn't introduce me!" Rhodey lamented, as though he were ever around long enough to get introduced to anybody but the few people that actually stayed with Tony long-term. "Did you at least get me an autograph?"

"I'm not sure he _can_ write," Tony grumbled. "Didn't want to embarrass him in front of all his new friends."

"Aw, man, I can't believe the Earth was attacked by aliens and I had to miss it on account of _insurgents in the middle of a goddamn desert_." Apparently, poor Rhodey didn't have a lot of belief left for anything. He was welcome to join the ranks of cynics alongside all the cool people. "Sometimes I think you might have the better job, after all."

"Front all you want, Rhodes." Tony huffed and slithered out from under his friend's arm to point two finger guns at him. "We've both always known I've got the better job. And the better colleagues. Which reminds me – Jay, how come you didn't warn me that Rhodey-bear was on his way?" He made sure it came out as a joke, even though he wasn't feeling amused at all. No one, not even Pepper, should have been able to sneak up on him.

"It was part of the deal with Miss Potts, sir," JARVIS said. "Welcome, Colonel Rhodes. Will you be staying with us?" His perfectly pleasant tone of voice and the affect of servility didn't exactly disguise the warning – the 'I am keeping an eye on you at all times, Colonel'.

Rhodey treated himself to a beer from the fridge and ambled back to the newly replaced window to stand next to Tony and look out at the landing pad outside. And at the New York being rebuilt beyond it. "I might. Pepper hasn't told me anything except that she dumped you. What did you do?"

Tony ignored his friend's shrewd look and tried to think of a way out of the ensuing confrontation. So, this was Pepper's revenge. It was brilliant. It was even better than she could have known, because she had no idea how much old shit was about to hit the fucking fan.

"Tones?" Rhodey demanded, not amused anymore.

The easiest way out of this situation would be to glibly announce that he had fucked someone else and Pepper got her panties in a twist over it – Rhodey was enough of an old-school mama's boy that he would get all butt-hurt on Pepper's behalf and maybe even let Tony goad him into leaving before-

The door behind them opened and then the point was moot.

Banner stopped in the doorway, holding a tablet in one hand and tapping out an email with the other. He hesitated for an instance, and then accepted the visitor with nary a hint of resignation. "Rhodes."

Rhodey froze. He stared at Banner as if he was seeing a ghost, first going chalkier in the face than Tony had ever seen him (barring that one time in the hospital after he had almost bled out) and then flushing. "You!"

Banner set the tablet down onto a saran-wrapped armchair, freeing his hands. He didn't move from the spot, projecting a calculated impression of ease, watching Rhodey's every movement.

It suddenly occurred to Tony that it was _extremely_ likely that someone was going to die here. And they had just laid the new carpet.

He glanced at the patch of the floor where a Loki-shaped hole used to be, and decided that he didn't want to ever see a Rhodey-shaped hole in that floor. So he stepped in before the confrontation escalated: "Hands off, cowboy. You don't want him to hulk out, do you?"

Rhodey rounded on him, swelling with fury. "Hulk- _hulk out_?! Are you out of your goddamn mind, Tony? Banner, I'm not even surprised _you_ turned yourself into a gamma bomb and killed hundreds of people-"

"Go with _dozens_ , Rhodey," Tony cut in glibly, "by last count it's still less than two hundred."

"-but I've had enough of you dicking with my friend-"

Banner took off his glasses and, polishing them with the edge of his shirt, conversationally said: "I won't play tug-o-war with you, Rhodes. I'd win if I did, but then, conceding to play in the first place would constitute a loss."

Rhodey's flush reached aneurysm proportions, but he was smart enough to realize how Banner's statement about losing applied to him, too, so he swallowed his retort and tried a different tactic. "Tony, I thought you'd moved past this. You've gotten rid of him once already – why would you let him come back to you? You don't owe him anything-"

"That's the thing, buddy," Tony cut in, semi-aware of his lover's curious gaze (as disaffected as he appeared, the man had a way of silently daring people to do things). "I never did. Banner and I – we've never owed one another shit. And I'm including the hospital bills in that."

Banner didn't do anything to give away the lie.

"Don't do this," Rhodey begged. Actually straight-up _begged_. "Either of you." His eyes travelled between them. "Don't. Tony, send him away. Banner, go. Go, get the hell away from here before-"

"Before what, Rhodes?" Banner inquired, still calm enough to drive a saint to murder. "Before you try to make me? And unleash _the other guy_ in the middle of Manhattan?"

"You ever seen King Kong, Rhodey?" Tony quipped, toeing the line of hysteria.

Rhodey clenched his fists, barely keeping hold of his temper. "Why would you even stay here if you _know_ you're dangerous? Do you really not give even that much of a damn?"

Banner crossed his arms in front of his chest – the single concession he made to the world of discomfort he must have been feeling at that moment. "I was brought here to save people. I've been made to go to other places before, Rhodes. I've been made to harm people. At this point, I don't have much choice in what I do. But it seems like I may have a choice in who holds the monster's leash."

Hoo boy. He went there. Although, maybe the fact that it was _the Army_ who had made and misused the Hulk would be more important to Rhodey than the fact it was the U.S. armed forces? Their interdepartmental rivalries were so screwy that there was no way to guess if Rhodey would go all _hurrah_ on them or agree that Ross was full of shit.

As it turned out, Rhodey completely ignored all aspersions cast on his green-brained extended family and focused on the other part.

"And you picked Tony?" he asked incredulously.

"Better the devil you know, isn't it?" Banner replied brazenly, and shrugged. "Tony, I'll be in the lab."

Rhodey took the opportunity to lay into Tony with the full force of his good intentions – which were mighty indeed. Owing to long years of friendship, Tony did his level best to placate and reassure for as long as he could.

Twenty minutes later, he followed on Banner's heels to lock himself up in his workshop.

x

It took less than twenty-four hours for the invasion of the government stooges to begin. This time JARVIS issued the warning well in advance, and Tony had the time to set up a whole elaborate ruse just for the kicks.

He was dressed in sweatpants and a tee so old it might have remembered Watergate, already having worked up a sweat, when the delegation was let out of the elevator onto the fifth floor of the Stark Tower. Which was divided into the gym (free for the employees) and the squash courts (available based on advance reservation).

Tony and Banner continued playing for a while – until the ball bounced off and rolled along the wall almost to Romanov's feet. Then they let the rackets down; Banner went off to get their water bottles while Tony faced the two SHIELD agents head on.

"Stark-"

"Miss Rushman, what brings you to my humble abode?"

"It's disgusting that you can say those words with a straight face," grumbled Barton.

Tony knew that JARVIS was watching, so he risked taking his eyes off of the woman.

Barton looked like he had been through a mill, even worse than he had looked directly after the battle. And he had looked pretty bad after the battle – what with being brain-jacked by Loki's glowstick and then thrown into a fight against ugly aliens with barely a chance to shower in between. To be fair, 'hopped up on military grade smack and dropped in the midst of an alien invasion' probably wasn't a good look on anyone.

Now Barton looked like he wished Romanov had skirts he could hide behind.

"You should see me when I really get going," Tony snarked. "Listen to this one: _it's good to see you_. How did I do?"

Barton snorted. He did, even, briefly look up at Tony. His eyes were still bluish, but it was the kind of dirty watercolor blue that never made an impression on anyone. There was nothing eerie about it.

"So, Rushman," Tony repeated the alias just to be irritating, "back to you. I assume you being here means you want something, so you might as well come out and say it."

"About the Avengers Initiative-"

"I already said no. In fact, _you_ already said no," Tony reminded her. "Don't tell me you're changing your mind just because you've seen how convenient it is to have someone take care of your own nuke?"

"Talk about friendly fire," Banner added dryly, a bottle in each hand.

Romanov flinched. "That nuke was deployed against Director Fury's direct orders," she protested. "He tried to stop it. Whoever did it was not a SHIELD agent-"

" _Loyal_ SHIELD agent is what you mean," Banner cut in.

Romanov flinched again, and this time it was either an act, or simply a reaction to being addressed by 'the Hulk', which Tony found hilarious.

"Traitors everywhere, huh?" Tony grinned and clapped his hands, pretty sure that even the spies and assassins couldn't read the anger roiling behind the façade. "On the other hand, what's a little backstabbing within an organization consisting of backstabbers?"

This time it was Barton who flinched, and for once Tony didn't really doubt the authenticity of the reaction.

"So, Miss Rushman, what is it you want? And why should I give it to you?"

Romanov squared her shoulders and reset her persona to the default state. All emotional affect disappeared. "You were there, Stark. You've seen what the scepter can do. You know Clint isn't to blame for what happened-"

"Only inasmuch as working for the people who stole an alien artifact and poked it until it called some intergalactic douchebag to pick it up," Tony countered, smiling obnoxiously enough that she actually glared at him.

"You chose this life," Romanov snapped. "Some of us didn't have the luxury. The people we are – the skills we have – that can't be undone. We have a choice of how we use it, and believe me, SHIELD is by far the most altruistic of my handlers."

"And maybe I'd care, but I've read your assessment of me, so I know you're just gold-digging. And you aren't even offering to put out."

"Fuck you," Barton grumbled. "C'mon, Nat, let's get out of here. I don't need anything from this asshole."

And, wow, that almost worked. Tony caught himself opening his mouth to offer to put up Barton somewhere where he would be safe to recuperate out of reach of his vengeful colleagues, just because he felt guilty for having more money than them.

He clenched his teeth.

"Cute double-act," said Banner. "Did you practice it especially for Tony?"

"I'd feel flattered-" Never let it be said that Tony didn't catch on quickly. "-except Coulson could do better by himself."

There was a second – one single second, before they became the poker-faced minions of Fury again – when both Romanov and Barton looked like they had been hit into some soft spots. So, apparently Coulson was actually dead, and Fury had used the cards to illustrate the story rather than give it any credibility whatsoever.

But who knew? You could never be sure with this crowd.

"I owed Coulson one," Tony admitted, because he'd never forgotten that time he had put Pepper into danger and Coulson pulled her out of it, "so I came to save you from the big bad alien, Barton. But that debt's paid _and_ non-transferable. So you can take your cognitively recalibrated self elsewhere."

He would have liked to punctuate the statement by taking his water bottle from Banner's hands and re-focusing his attention from the spies and assassins to his own hydration – but unfortunately his little tick got in the way.

Banner didn't even make the move to hand him the bottle. That was another from those possibly subconscious (although Banner was a genius, so it might well have been perfectly conscious) quirks of their personal interaction from back in the eighties. Only Pepper had ever become nearly as capable at not automatically handing Tony anything, especially in front of people who would have made an anecdote of it.

Rhodey had kind-of mostly managed at the height of their interaction at MIT, but lost the habit since. Happy – well, Happy tried, and he always took Tony's refusals to accept things from him with good humor, which mostly made up for it.

Banner made this (apparently terribly difficult) consideration look natural (which was a mindfuck and half, because if he could do it so easily, why was Tony always labeled as the difficult one by every fucking asshole that wanted something from him but couldn't stand the heat?).

And, judging by how Romanov stared at his hands before she and Barton took their overdue leave, she had definitely noticed.

Banner waited until Tony looked his way, and then tossed the bottle.

Tony caught it.

Huh. He hadn't known that was okay. But – genius. Banner was very, very attractive.

Tony took a deep draught from the bottle, displaying his best assets as well as he could – the sweated-through tee clinging to his chest, the muscles of his throat working… coupled with his formidable hindquarters and machinist's arms, it was no wonder Banner indulged in the sight.

They were a two-men mutual appreciation society. Funny how some things didn't really change in more than two decades.

"You can still get pretty vicious when something inspires you," Banner mentioned, as if apropos of Tony's last thought. "It's a pity. Coulson seemed funny."

Tony capped off the half-empty bottle. "I guess he was probably the best out of a bad bunch. If it were him here today, I might have actually conceded to housing Barton… wait, no, that wouldn't work. You're here, so that precludes SHIELD-"

"Actually," Banner stops him, "I'm on my way out."

"What?" Okay… Tony had… not expected that. _What?_ "I… I thought you decided to stay."

Banner faced him with an expression of grim resolution. It was similar to the way he had faced Rhodey before – oh, Hell, this has fucked up everything between Rhodey and Tony only for Banner to slink away at the next opportunity?

If Tony had expected this, he would have let Banner fuck off a week ago and spare himself the heartache of watching his oldest friendship disintegrate.

"I was considering it," Banner admitted, like that made it any better. Or, fine, it was a little less vexing than the assumption that Banner had always intended to leave. "But now SHIELD found out I'm here, and the first thing they did was try to get their people in here to – I don't even know what. Spy on me? On you? Steal things? Poison us in our sleep?"

He had a point. Several points. Valid ones, at that.

"I don't know Tony. And I believe that you won't let them in, but they won't stop trying, and I can't live in this constant state of anxiety over how they'll try today and if that will result in the other guy going on a rampage through _Manhattan_."

Tony breathed in. It hurt. So, this was what it came down to. This was the end – so soon after the start. That's what he got for daring to hope. Shit, he had thought they would have more time, and even so he didn't expect it to ache quite so much.

Banner's eyes were imploring him to understand and forgive. "I can't. I want to, but I can't. I'm sorry, Tony."

Tony understood. As far as forgiveness went, he didn't feel like any was necessary in this instance. It wasn't betrayal – Banner hadn't stolen away in the middle of the night with pocketfuls of company secrets – and it wasn't even really abandonment, not in the fashion of the many acquaintances who had left Tony's orbit once the booze or the mania or the constant scrutiny became too much. _Tony_ wasn't the crux here.

That didn't make it easier. Fuck, it had been just a month and something – six weeks, maybe? – and somehow some part of Tony's programming had been so infected that he was experiencing separation anxiety at the mere mention of separation. Was this how other people felt all the time?

How did they survive?

x

Tony was aware of the countdown ticking off second after second even though there was no real countdown and no determined deadline, so it just felt like an interminable wait for the inevitable. He wished Banner had been a little more specific about the when.

But then, it was quite possible that Banner enjoyed Tony like this – manic, strung-out, off-the-wall when it came to both sex and science, sometimes thinking of both at once which might or might not have been the result of chronic sleep deprivation. Basically, Tony was a hot mess even without the drugs that used to make him a hot mess two decades ago, and that might have seemed familiar enough to Banner to be a comfortable state of affairs.

Still, Tony wasn't the type to give up easily when he wanted something. And he hadn't wanted anything like he wanted Banner for a long, long time.

"You do realize that the liver is not the only one of your organs you have compromised, sir?" JARVIS pointed out while Tony tweaked some of the measurements on what turned out to be a resounding failure of a simulation.

"Heart, lungs," Tony parroted obediently. Jay could keep his smartass comments to himself – Tony had actually personally been there in Afghanistan, learning to breathe anew.

" _Kidneys_ ," intoned the A.I. "As in, the next energy drink you drink may require hospitalization."

"Why would you do that to me?" Tony whined.

The door to his workshop slid open. He had not authorized any access, but there Jay went over his head again, letting Banner and his armful of foodstuffs in. Tony had been all geared up to protest, but the rich aroma must have gummed up some of those gears inside him, because no words came out of his mouth.

There was also a lot of saliva. What was he – Pavlov's dog?

"Eat," Banner ordered in that mild voice that almost made it sound like not-an-order. Tony reflexively reached out to pinch him, got his fingers smacked, and attempted to both pout and glare at the same time, with some dubious results. "What are you working on?"

"Nthng," Tony replied with his mouth full of steamed vegetables.

Banner gave him a look that impugned his intelligence.

Tony swallowed. "Veronica. Jay, pull up the proposal and the latest schematics. Maybe our transient genius can provide some concrit."

Banner shook off the 'transient' rebuke like he hadn't noticed it and delved into the files, which JARVIS obediently displayed for him. Tony watched with half of his attention on the food and half on his yet-lover.

Veronica was his last ditch attempt to convince Banner that he could be _made_ safe. Even if they hadn't figured out how to prevent the Hulk from happening, they could invent ways of containing him. That was what Tony did – he invented shit.

Was it too much to ask that people believed in his thousand-times-proven ability?

Banner stared at the 3D holographic model of the satellite for a long while. Then he sighed.

"Tony, that is highly theoretical-"

"The difference between highly theoretical and done is, what, Jarvis?" Apparently, it _was_ too much to ask.

"On average one hundred and forty-two hours, sir, although I did not include the Mark One in this statistics. I felt it would unfairly lengthen your time, seeing as it was built in a cave in the middle of a desert."

At least JARVIS believed in him. It was cold comfort, but better than no comfort at all. "Right. That. Thanks, Jay, you're a buddy." He faced Banner and, even though he didn't harbor any real hope, he asked: "So?"

Banner looked back dispassionately. "Ambitious. I don't doubt you'll manage, in time. But you don't even have a viable simulation at the moment, Tony, and I may not know a lot about the administrative side of space traffic, but I don't think you'd get a permit for that thing in the next _month_."

Tony could absolutely get it. He had a billion dollars that said so.

"Besides, that doesn't solve the Ross problem-"

Oh, was Banner kidding right now? Tony had zero compunctions about putting out a hit on Ross. It wouldn't even be that expensive – getting to Ross was childplay. Tony could have done it himself, if he was the type to get his hands unnecessarily dirty.

"-and I've heard rumors about another subpoena from the Senate. I'm not playing this game."

Tony stood, reflected for a moment, and then threw his mostly empty plate to the floor, where it smashed into dozens of sharp shards of china. A roomba shot out from under one of the work counters and descended upon the mess.

Banner had flinched initially and started backing up against the door, as if afraid that Tony would hit him.

Ridiculous.

"Fuck you, then!" Tony growled. If Banner wanted to find excuses for why this couldn't work, why he should leave Tony again and go on his quest of self-discovery or redemption or whatever the fuck his backpacking trip was supposed to be, then he was welcome to. "Fuck off to search for your moral highground, like the time-forgotten hippie that you are. Maybe some people fall for this ruse, but I know who you actually are, _Robert_ , and I will not forget. So if that's why you won't stay around – just go to Hell."

Banner went – perhaps not to Hell, but far enough away from Tony's little fit of pique.

"May I recommend that you go rest now, sir, before you sour another relationship of yours?" JARVIS inquired pithily.

Tony stared at the gently revolving model of Veronica until a sheen of tears turned it into a blob of blue light, and then let himself fall onto the couch and succumb to sleep.

x

In the mid-morning on the next day Tony was well-caffeinated, semi-sane, and swallowing the bitter pill of facing Banner in the living space of the penthouse.

Banner was, unsurprisingly, pretending that yesterday had not happened. He had a lot of experience ignoring Tony's lapses of decorum (or rationality) and his life philosophy of always taking the road of lesser resistance manifested this way more often than not.

"They're sending Loki off tomorrow, so I'm going to talk to him," Tony said. The only reaction was a noncommittal hum. "You coming?"

"No," Banner replied, finally looking up from his (paper) magazine. "No, I don't want to talk to the murderer. I don't especially find that sort of thing fascinating." There was more than a bit of accusation in his tone.

Tony certainly wasn't going to try and make him, but Banner seemed to maybe want to fight (perhaps in response to yesterday? – maybe Tony was wrong about the lesser resistance thing?), and Tony wasn't going to roll over and take it. He was kind of curious what their fights would be like now that their limits had moved all over the map. Would they be more controlled for the amount of damage they now could inflict?

Or would they just be more destructive?

Tony snorted. "You judgmental you – as if you'd never killed anyone."

Banner scowled. "I keep telling you, the _other guy_ 's not me!"

"I'm not talking about Big Green, Banner. I'm talking about summer of eighty-nine, you borrowing my Ferrari and driving over Jimmy Cartwright. Remember him? Little weaselly guy with a mouth that vomited gallons of shit. I'm not saying he didn't deserve it, and I think the work I've done on the car to hide your little _oops_ proved that, but you're not exactly innocent enough to cast any stones."

"…oh, god."

"Yeah." Tony chuckled mirthlessly. "A Norse one. That we've caught twice, and he looked pretty damn happy about it both times. After the way his first incarceration ended, I'm going to check this fucking Trojan horse hooves to eartips." He walked away, tired of this pretentious conflict, although far be it from him to pass upon a parting volley: "If your conscience bites too much, my bar is at your disposal, polynomial."

x

"They're watching this," Tony said to the shackled extraterrestrial.

The Cage was back on the Helicarrier, or perhaps they had built a new one – it was hard to tell. Loki didn't look especially bothered about being interred, and he didn't react to the mention of the oversight.

Tony looked through the glass. He had wanted to go inside, but Fury had dug his heels in, and it wasn't worth the bother. "Recording, too. I don't doubt you're aware of it, but I thought I should point it out, just in case."

Loki, predictably, said nothing. He did roll his eyes, though, and that Tony found encouraging.

"They tell you the latest stats?" he inquired. "I mean, casualties, cost of damages, that sort of thing?"

Loki stared at him, impassive.

"I mean, it looks bad to all these law enforcement people, but for a self-proclaimed god it's kind of a _faux pas_. _I_ could do worse if someone switched my coffee to decaf."

There was a hint of crow's feet around Loki's eyes, which was about all the confirmation Tony needed, really.

He sighed. This was becoming boring.

"Remember that thing I told you before you chucked me out of my window?"

Loki scowled.

Tony rolled his eyes back at him. "Not the dick joke – though, oversensitive much? – the threatening part. I _meant_ it, Hathor."

There. Now Fury was happy thinking that Tony was keeping a grudge against the would-be conqueror, and Tony was contented that his line of communication with the (possibly more advanced) alien civilization remained open. Invitation issued.

Mission accomplished.

x

Tony's delightful new set of night terrors woke him before dawn.

He made the requisite circuit of the bathroom and then dropped back into his bed, exhausted, too wired to sleep, and determined to wallow.

His surprise night guest (hadn't Tony been enough of an ass yesterday and the day before?) slept through all of it. Slept like he felt safe in Tony's house, in Tony's presence. Slept like – and here the odd sensation of inevitability crept in – like he knew it was his last chance to rest before he would throw himself back into the tornado of life on the lam with an aura of mortal danger to the passers-by.

It occurred to Tony, as he lay there in the dark, sharing his bed, that Banner had stopped smelling strange. When they had met on the Helicarrier and in the days – weeks? – afterwards, he had smelled like the weird Indian spices that were used in huge quantities in all Indian food and ended up stocked inside people's bodies. Frankly, Tony had been shocked at Banner's lack of lethal halitosis (another frequent side-effect of Indian food). Now there was just a hint of Tony's soap, easily disregarded, and underneath it the still-familiar smell of Robert.

This train of thought was terrible, and Tony tried to fall asleep in self-defense.

Unfortunately, this worked about as well as it ever did, so he heaved himself out of the bed, left Robert behind (ha! payback! in advance!) and slunk off in search of coffee and holographic interfaces.

Veronica took shape under his fingers, evolving in leaps and bounds, but still not fast enough. No matter how much he hurried, it wasn't within human limits to finish the project today.

"Did you change your mind about going?" Banner asked, interrupting Tony's internal argument about the feasibility of creating a Hulk-buster armor that could fly up to orbit under its own power (and only there would re-form into the shape of a satellite, Bumblebee-style) as opposed to one that would be carried up by a group of Iron Man armors.

Tony raised his head; glared; accepted the proffered bribe of coffee. He lost his glare at some point in the midst of pouring said coffee down his throat. Also, he remembered what Banner was talking about.

"No. I'm definitely dropping by." Tony needed to go wave the incongruently contented (possibly willing) prisoner goodbye and if an opportunity presented itself also re-confirm his invitation. He might have originally issued it in a post-battle haze, but he meant it even more now. "It's good politics to make friends with powerful people, and I'm unconvinced the collective humanity has anything that would phase that guy. Maybe short of a nuke."

Banner raised his eyebrows. When he spoke, it came out completely toneless: "I thought he looked phased when Thor was pulling him out of your flooring."

Tony cocked a hip. "You're seriously going to act offended? Because _of course_ I must have been implying that Big Green somehow makes you _non-human_ – yeah, that's exactly what I was going for there."

"That, or you were implying that the self-proclaimed god _wanted_ me to smack him around. No one is _that much_ of a masochist."

"Seemed to me that he came off perfectly fine," Tony pointed out.

The cogs in Banner's head started turning in a different direction. "You're assuming he was acting rationally."

Tony shrugged. "Haven't exactly seen anything that would suggest otherwise. He's mentally and emotionally stable – barring a couple of occasions that were in hindsight _obvious_ trolling – and his plans worked out to his satisfaction, which leads me to assume that he _did_ actually get what he wanted, and that we _still_ don't know what the fuck it even was. Aside from getting smacked around by you."

"You're deep in conspiracy theory territory there," Banner pointed out, but he sounded thoughtful rather than dismissive.

Tony knew he had him. "Two points. One, my paranoia is justified and has been serving me well for years. Two, I'm not going to twist the facts to fit my theory – not even if I don't like the facts and my theory's my baby. That way lies death and destitution."

"It's still just a theory."

"And it'll remain so unless Space Maleficent feels like answering questions with any amount of honesty. Which is a moot point, because the first thing Thor did after his _adopted_ bro was brought in was put a muzzle on him."

Banner nodded pensively. "Makes sense. Loki must know a staggering amount of strategically valuable information about Asgard. Thor would not want that in our hands." By 'our' he of course meant primarily SHIELD hands, but it probably applied to any human hands whatsoever. He looked at Tony – and there was no censure in his expression anymore. "I think I'm beginning to get it. He's a declared enemy of _Asgard_ , but his attack on _us_ was largely circumstantial."

"And," Tony added, "he went to great lengths to ensure that _you_ would be brought in, and made available to smack him around. Great, explicit, inarguable lengths."

Banner sighed and adjusted the strap of his backpack on his shoulder. "Fine. Let's go so you can covertly invite him back for a chat."

Tony grinned. "Actu-

"And on the way back you can drop me off at JFK."

Tony's grin slipped.

x

"I've heard you were in to talk to Loki," said Rogers instead of 'hello'.

Tony looked at him through his sunglasses, happily aware that there was no way even Rogers' enhanced eyes could see through the mirror lenses from the other side.

"Have you _seen the footage_?" Tony inquired, as patronizingly as he could, despite the promise of murder Romanov was telegraphing at him.

"As a matter of fact-"

"My friends!" Thor exclaimed over all of them. "Although it pains me to leave you without the traditional feast, I must deliver my brother to Asgard, so he may face the Thing!"

"Too bad you broke the yellow brick road," Tony quipped, quietly enough that the whole group could pretend they didn't hear.

It was enough to see Rogers flush in response.

"They're off to see the Wizard," Banner muttered, thus proving that he truly was no better than Tony. At all.

Rogers' pink deepened. He clenched his fists and pulled his face into an expression of righteousness that could have been copied from any of the comic books' covers.

"We are, in fact, to see the Allfather," Thor corrected Banner gently.

By now even the spy twins had to expend effort to keep from snickering.

Loki looked a little pained around the eyes.

"Have a good trip," Tony said, waving his hand at the trickster god. He sounded sarcastic enough, although, judging by Loki's eyeroll, he had made his point.

"Die in a fire," Barton added.

Tony noted that this particular well-wish hadn't been acknowledged at all. And didn't that make him feel special?

Fortunately, Thor didn't insist on much ceremony. He grabbed Loki in one hand, the Tesseract in the other, said "May Fortune smile upon you, my friends!" and let himself be swept by a stupidly wasteful column of energy.

"Here's to hoping we won't see Loki again," said Rogers, proving once and for all that he was an irredeemable moron.

"I wouldn't mind," pointed out Barton. "I've got an arrow with his name on it." Funnily enough, he didn't look half as pathetic as he had looked during his visit to the Stark Tower. Apparently some people recuperated really quickly.

Romanov seized the opportunity to ambush Banner again. "Doctor-"

"We have had this conversation before, Agent," Banner cut her off, harmless persona slipping enough to let a sliver of a razor-sharp smile through. "You've met up close and personal with my subconscious, and I believe it expressed my feelings clearly enough."

"Burn," Tony muttered, put his arm around Banner's shoulders, and with all the obnoxiousness of a redoubtable billionaire playboy steered him toward his convertible.

The SHIELD stooges were momentarily cowed enough to not follow them for fear of releasing the Hulk in the Central Park. As if they hadn't fucking learnt anything at all from the entire debacle.

This time, Tony didn't have to fight for the keys or his right to drive his own car.

Banner sat next to him, solemn enough to give the impression that he wasn't _tickled_ to be leaving Tony behind. Tony spent rousing ten minutes mentally fighting with himself, and in the end growled: "Glove box."

Banner blinked at him, startled out of some mysterious contemplation, and then obediently checked the box. He pulled out the roll of notes Tony had had in mind.

Tony waited for the protest. It didn't come. Banner pocketed the roll and only said a subdued: "Thanks."

Banner was possibly the only one of Tony's lovers that had taken Tony's wealth for a fact without taking advantage of it. There were never any pretentiously modest proclamations of self-sufficiency, nor had Banner ever come to Tony with demands or requests (or even pleading) to give away anything Tony hadn't offered freely.

No wonder Tony was still fucked up about him to this day.

"Grudges aside," Banner said nearly out of blue, revealing what all that hard contemplation was about, "Captain America has his uses, Tony. Try not to publicly humiliate him too badly?"

Tony wasn't about to make any promises. Most of his reactions when it came to Rogers were knee-jerk and, honestly, Rogers kept asking for it. If he could act like a somewhat polite human being toward another human being when he spoke to Tony, there was a chance – but Rogers had started their interactions out with fatherly reprimands, and when Tony turned out not to be receptive to them – _che sorpresa!_ – Rogers went for the disapproving commanding officer poise.

He was probably the only one surprised when Tony Stark reacted to that like a cat dunked into water.

"People who knew Howard fall into one of two categories. Either they hated him, and now hate me for being just like him, or they liked him and now hate me for not being enough like him." This was such an integral fact of Tony's life that he had ceased being bitter about it. Now it was a bit of a game to him to play off of those detractors. "Rogers is special in that he somehow manages both at once."

Banner sighed at him. "Just make sure that when you do destroy him, you use the resulting capital well."

To Tony's credit, he waited until the car was parked to kiss Banner within an inch of his life.

He was perfectly willing to go for a blowjob, too, but Banner noticed the airport security beginning to give them a little too much attention, and scrammed.

Tony drove home and – _che sorpresa_ – got blind drunk.


	4. Breaking Up

Chapter Four: Breaking Up

x

"He's not here," Tony said when Rhodey walked into his workshop.

He wasn't entirely sober, but the buzz he had going didn't prevent him from doing any of the theoretical work on his budding satellite. Possibly technically an orbital station, depending on how the simulations went.

This time JARVIS had warned him that Rhodey was on his way, and also that there was a SWAT unit on standby in the lobby. Owing to their long friendship, Rhodey had managed to talk them into letting him try nicely.

Tony couldn't express how much he hated the fact that Banner had been right about leaving. Tony could defend him from a single SWAT unit. There was a good chance Tony could have stood up to all the SWAT units in existence, and come out victorious.

But he wasn't entirely confident about winning the resulting war against the U.S. of A., and it was so much simpler – and cheaper – to say truthfully that Banner wasn't there for them to take anymore.

"Tony-"

"Sorry, crumble cake," Tony cut in over the exasperated tones of his _best friend_. With a hotkey combination he directed JARVIS to hide everything from sight. "He skedaddled after we sent off the Asgardians. You can check with customs _if you don't believe me_." He said it lightly, but the sentiment was heavy. "Wasn't going to wait around for Ross to come fetch him."

Here Rhodey could have puffed up and gotten all butt-hurt about the fact that Tony hadn't trusted him to keep his secrets… if, well, you know, he hadn't gone and sold those secrets, together with his _soul_.

"Tony, if you're lying-"

"Wouldn't lie to you, American Dream." That was a little cattier than Tony had meant to sound, but then, Tony had reasons to be butt-hurt himself. "You can check with Jarvis, too."

Rhodey sighed. "Jarvis, please tell me Tony isn't hiding Banner in his closet."

"Sir is not hiding _Doctor_ Banner in any of his wardrobes," Jay replied, sounding a little catty himself. Huh. Who knew if that was the imprint of Tony's personality on the A.I. leaking through, or if Jarvis had come to like Banner of his own accord? "Nor is he concealing him under any of his beds."

Bless his bitchy silicon heart, Tony thought.

"I hope for your sake that's the truth," Rhodey professed.

For _my_ sake, Tony repeated to himself. As if he wasn't aware that if he were lying now, the trouble Rhodey would get into was far deeper than any trouble Tony would face.

"Would you look at me?!" demanded his friend.

Tony conceded and turned.

"I didn't know I was setting off a witch-hunt when I mentioned him," Rhodey said, radiating sadness from his big brown peepers.

Tony believed him. Tony believed that Rhodey had believed he would cause a few problems, just enough to scare Banner off or convince Tony that Banner wasn't worth the trouble (fat chance there), exorcising the ghost from their past without harming the present.

Rhodey had believed wrong.

"Look at the U.S. Army going 'human rights? what human rights?'. I mean, who would have thought?" Tony spread his arms and shrugged theatrically.

"I told him!" Rhodey growled. "I told him straight to his face that if he ever came near you again, I would see him put away for what he did to you!"

"What he did to me?" Tony repeated with intentionally irritating unconcern. He knew where his friend was coming from, but that was a whole lot of water under the bridge, and Rhodey was just going to have to deal.

"He _abused_ you! It's been long enough since that you could at least finally admit it!"

Tony wasn't going to argue this _again_. He had wanted to talk about Loki – about the real motives behind the invasion and the possible threat from space – with the hopes that Rhodey might believe him and help him start preparing contingencies. As it was, though, Rhodey would either decide that Tony was paranoid, or take the information and run off with it to the brasshats.

Too bad. Tony would have to find his allies elsewhere. If he and JARVIS couldn't make it on their own.

"You're adorable when you get your shining armor on, sweetheart," Tony mocked. "And I'm not talking about the War Machine-"

"Shut up," Rhodey growled.

Tony laughed at his grumpy face, and led him out of the workshop. "Love you, pookie."

Rhodey – grumpily – replied: "I love you, too."

JARVIS secured the door behind them while Tony took it upon himself to distract Rhodey with tales of Captain America in the 21st century. That was a topic they could safely argue about.

x

Tony burst into Pepper's office, checked that she wasn't on the phone, and demanded: "Are you dating Aldrich Killian?"

"You don't get to be jealous after-"

"Not jealousy, paranoia." Tony put a tablet on the desk in front of Pepper, displacing some sort of contract that she was color-coding (or that someone had color-coded for her – she used to be a P.A., those people had weird relationships with color-coding, it was entirely plausible that she had hired someone for the specific purpose of color-coding her hateful _paper_ stuff). "Jarvis says hi."

"He could have told me himself," Pepper pointed out, but she did take the tablet and start scrolling through the information. Her frown gradually deepened into a scowl. The flint in her eyes sharpened.

"Guess he was worried you might eviscerate the messenger."

Pepper rolled her eyes. "And sent you in his stead? That does not even make sense sarcastically, Tony. Do we have enough to charge Aldrich with anything that would stick?" She did not seem surprised.

On the other hand, she had been approached by a man whom she had not seen in years, a man who headed a think-tank that was at least partially in competition with S.I., and who started aggressively romancing her out of blue. That must have set off even more warning alarms than Agent Romanov's little sojourn into business espionage.

Of course Pepper had expected this turn-up.

"Jay, scan?" he suggested.

They waited in silence. Pepper continued reading, by now at least to the part where the potential criminal charges began, which Tony personally liked better as an option than just hanging Killian out to dry for trying to copy some designs.

JARVIS hijacked the lighting fixtures and shone a tiny circle of light on the underside of the shelf with the Newton's Cradle and onto the edge of the frame of a diploma – some sort of award for managerial skill that Pepper displayed to prove that she was better at this job than anyone else that stepped into this office would be.

Which was just redundant, but Pepper _was_ actually better at this than Tony, so he let her do it her way.

Tony took the frame off the wall and scrutinized it. "Oh, look," he whispered. "What a nasty little bug."

"Trace complete, sir," reported the A.I.

Pepper cracked her knuckles. "Then let's take them apart, gentlemen."

x

Tony was having a victory drink, sprawled on a couch in the penthouse, watching the comprehensive coverage of the A.I.M. investigation, which had started innocuously with suspicion of business espionage and invasion of privacy and ended – which even he hadn't expected – with actual terrorism charges.

He was a little disappointed to see Maya Hansen carted off – the woman had bucketloads of potential, savant as she was at bioengineering – but she had made her own bed by bedding down with Killian.

Bonus: JARVIS had recovered what was left of A.I.M.'s computers after Killian had pulled the plug.

Killian was still in the wind – he had unexpectedly burnt down a SWAT unit with… his breath? – but a manhunt had been started, which according to latest gossip included Captain America himself, so that was a problem best left in the dubiously competent hands of SHIELD.

Tony's self-congratulation was interrupted by the advent of an angry Air Force Lieutenant Colonel.

"You didn't tell me about this! Damn it, Tones, why didn't you just tell me?"

This was it. This was the moment – the point of no return. Tony looked into his best friend's face, and drew the line. "Because I don't trust you, honeybear."

Rhodey froze. It took him a moment to find his voice, and when he did, what came out of his mouth was: "Wha-what?"

"One word, Rhodey: Banner," Tony said, turning to the screen showing the funny little actor Killian had hired to play a religious zealot. "Three strikes. You're out."

He didn't see the reaction – wasn't entirely sure if he wanted to. He had hurt himself excising parts of his and Rhodey's friendship from his emotional walls, but he knew better than to keep forgiving and keep trusting.

When the silence stretched like toffee – and grew to similar thickness – he couldn't stand it anymore. He turned.

Rhodey looked… _crushed_. That was the most authentic description Tony could think of. This tall, built man that had been a stalwart pillar of Tony's sanity for literal decades seemed to have crumbled from within.

Rhodey swallowed a couple of times, blinking with alarming frequency, and when he spoke his voice was a small, injured thing. "You said you forgave me."

"And I did." Tony nodded. His hands, autonomous from the rest of him, poured a drink. "The first time." He took a gulp. It burned a little. Not enough. "And the second time." He took another gulp. His hands weren't shaking, and that surprised him a bit, which was wholly absurd because his hands never shook. He was the engineering equivalent of a neurosurgeon. "But I didn't forget and, Rhodes, trusting you bit me on the ass three times, so I won't do it anymore. See? I've learnt. I've grown as a person."

Holy shit, that felt bad to say. Nauseating.

"Tony, I swear I didn't mean to-"

"That just makes it worse," Tony cut him off, somewhat frightened that he would let himself be convinced to change his decision. To compromise. To compromise himself. "Almost makes it my moral obligation to alert your superior officers to the fact that a Colonel _cannot_ keep secrets. Well, owing to a long friendship full of awesome stuff, I won't do that."

Rhodey knew all his weak spots. It was anyone's guess if he actually cared enough for Tony to not exploit them, especially after Tony had washed his hands of him. They would see.

Honeybear wrung his hands. "Tony…"

"I love you, Rhodey. That hasn't stopped just because I can't trust you anymore. Scotch?" He set another glass onto the counter.

Rhodey liked his scotch on the rocks. They had ice. It hadn't even begun to melt yet.

As opposed to Rhodey himself. He was melting all right – fat, glittering drops of water trickled down his face once his compulsive blinking failed him.

When the first one touched his upper lip, his tongue reflexively licked it off. Only then he realized what was going on, and ran away, leaving Tony behind with two glasses of scotch, one neat and one on the rocks.

Well, more scotch for him. And wasn't that what life was really about when it came down to it?

x

"Sir?"

Tony woke up. He was lying on a couch in the penthouse. Outside was an overcast day; early afternoon according to the nearest tablet. The TV was muted – the program looked like a nature documentary of some sort. There were fish, in any case.

Also, there was the beginning of a mild hangover echoing through his skull.

"Jarvis?"

"I thought you might be interested," Jay replied. The fish disappeared, and the semi-familiar look of Pepper's quarters replaced it.

Good thing that JARVIS had even less ethics-related compunctions than Tony did, and found nothing wrong with invading Pepper's privacy if Tony's well-being might have been on the line.

"Rhodey and Pepper," Tony mused. "Well, there's an ideal opportunity to take his own pound of flesh. Let's hear how many new enemies I've accrued today, Jarvis."

JARVIS must have waited for the endorsement, because he turned on the sound without any comment.

"Jim," Pepper sighed. She hesitated. Then she sat down next to Rhodey and put her hand on his shoulder. Her face was screwed up in a mixture of exasperation and sympathy. "Oh, damn it. I wish I could say I can't believe it, but…"

Rhodey nodded with his face in his hands. "It's too authentically Tony."

"He might change his mind."

"In theory. But I won't hold my breath."

"I… Do you mind me asking…?"

"What I've done?" Rhodey filled in.

"I assume that taking the armor featured in there – and I don't blame you, because he was off the rails at the time." The exasperation briefly deepened into the memory of fury.

Rhodey sat up straight and shook his head. "He _wanted_ me to take the armor." The armors were protected by JARVIS, and no one could so much as turn on the heads-up display without the right biometrics, so this conclusion was pretty obvious. "That's not the part where I fucked up. It was letting Hammer work on it. Alter it. Replicate parts of it. I handed Justin Hammer the tech he used to make his drones."

"Oh," Pepper replied. It was a very noncommittal 'oh'. Since she had nearly died during the Attack of the Hammeroids, she had a pretty good reason to herself be pissed at Rhodey for that particular security SNAFU.

"I told Obadiah about the arc reactor," Rhodey admitted.

Pepper hadn't known that either. Judging by her expression, she hadn't forgotten that she had nearly died back then as well. And that she had ended up forced to kill someone.

Granted, Stane had been a proven asshole at that point, and Tony wasn't sad to see him blow up, but Pepper was a little more delicate about hands-on murder. It was satisfying to see her angry at Rhodey, even though she was self-contained enough to suppress the emotion and focus on the consoling.

"It just – didn't even occur to me that I shouldn't. Tony's never kept his inventions secret from Obadiah." That Rhodey knew of.

Maybe Tony should have been more forthcoming about the difference between trusting in someone's business savvy and trusting someone. Spilt milk, though.

If someone told you that their life depended on this piece of tech they had just invented… whose reaction was it to go and spill this information to the first person they met?

"That was a bad time for all of us," Pepper conceded, trying to placate Rhodey – who didn't seem to notice the patronization. "And now?"

Rhodey lapsed into contemplative silence. He drummed his fingers on his knee – a sure sign that he was dealing with some sort of dilemma – and then he went for broke. "Did you know Banner before?" He shook his head and answered himself as he recalled the timeline. "No, you wouldn't have. You came in later, after Tony had, god, finally gotten rid of that asshole. You've never had Tony come to you with shiners like a fucking panda and sprained wrists and saying he'd asked for it."

"You mean…" Pepper frowned. "You mean Dr Banner hurt him?"

Rhodey scoffed. "Was just _Banner_ back then. I think he was actually working on the doctorate at that time. They did this. For couple of years, Pepper, I watched him try and destroy Tony, and Tony never even fucking admitted that there was a problem. Everything was just _fine_ all the damn time."

"Why didn't you…" Pepper trailed off.

"Why didn't I what? Ride in like a knight in shining armor and save him? I didn't have the shining armor then, and Tony didn't want to be saved. I tried. He told me if I went for it, he'd cut _me_ out of his life, and no fucking way was I going to let that bastard isolate Tony completely."

"I'm sorry."

Rhodey waved the apology away. "Long time ago. Except, two decades after I think we're safely rid of Banner, he's back here, and he's suddenly _living with him_ again. No way. No way was I going to stand aside and watch that man beat on my friend again."

Tony could see the exact moment when Pepper figured it all out. She was, after all, brilliant in her own right. "Whom did you tell?"

"My C.O.," Rhodey admitted. "And the grapevine carried it to General Ross."

"Oh. So – that was the third strike?"

"Yes. Yes, and, knowing a little about what Ross had done to Banner – I am sorry for that. I'm not surprised he bolted." Rhodes sighed, leant into the backrest and spoke to the ceiling. "But the worst thing, the worst damn thing, Pepper – in hindsight, I think Tony was happy. Like, almost genuinely. He had bruises on his face, and he walked funny on some days, but he was happier than I've seen him since."

Pepper looked awful – as though Rhodey had hit her, what with pretty much telling her point blank that even in a relationship with her Tony hadn't been all that happy. Which was bullshit. Tony had been plenty happy. The word Rhodey had been lumbering toward and missed by yards was 'fulfilled'.

With Pepper, Tony had been preoccupied with fitting himself into an arbitrary mold made of expectations, because it was what Pepper wanted. So, sure, it had been cramped and uncomfortable, and some days he just longed to stretch in ways he hadn't been allowed to, but if he had been unhappy he wouldn't have done it.

"That's enough, Jay," he said.

The screen went dark. JARVIS silently waited for Tony's reaction to spying on his friends, but Tony was coming to the realization that it was better to be safe than sorry. Lack of paranoia had hurt him, so he was trying to do things his way.

If he had to choose between his own safety and Rhodey's (or Pepper's) privacy, there wasn't even a choice involved.

"I'm glad honeybear understands," he remarked, leaning over and picking up a tablet to fiddle with the design of his future (maybe) orbital station. "I was a little concerned that he might feel like I've done him an injustice."

"I will be sorry to strike Colonel Rhodes off the list of your trusted associates, sir," JARVIS replied, and Tony guessed he was being sincere, too. "There aren't many names left on that list."

"Three?" Tony guessed.

"Four," JARVIS corrected him. "Miss Carter is still on there."

"Yeah, I guess. Delete her after she croaks, okay?"

Tony didn't want to think about Aunt Peg. At one point in his life she had been his favourite (living) human being, but that was a long time ago. They had parted ways over differences in weltanschauung, and although Tony thought that they would have been able to reconcile nowadays, Aunt Peg wasn't really there anymore.

Not enough to tell him apart from Howard, anyway. Staying away made it easier.

x

SHIELD managed to get Killian on a Wednesday.

For a given value of 'getting him'. By which Tony meant that they managed to get him _to blow up_ , and thus neutralized him, for the price of only one STRIKE team. It wasn't any of the important STRIKE teams, even, so nobody cared.

He carried the happy news to Pepper.

He found her long-sufferingly trying to keep her composure under the barrage of questions from some two-bit reporter.

Sure, Pepper had been doing a lot of PR work since the Battle of Manhattan – Tony had even done some, here and there – but mostly those were press releases and conferences. Not one-on-one interviews.

Tony listened for a while as the questions veered off from S.I.-related charitable work and into scandal-seeking territory. He might have managed to wait quietly until Pepper was done with the chit-

-if the chit hadn't opened her mouth and let out a completely fucking ridiculous thing.

"How can Mr Stark call himself the Iron Man? As far as we know, he has never once competed in the Iron Man race, and has no intentions of doing so-"

"I'll answer that one, if you don't mind, Miss Potts?" Tony spoke before he realized he was doing so. Never mind, though, the damage was done, and Pepper looked somewhat torn between the urge to rip him a new asshole and hug him in gratitude for the interruption.

The reporter's head swiveled around; her eyes rounded at the sight of Tony Stark in informal clothes (because he still owned this company, and if he wanted to go visit his CEO he went in whatever he was wearing at the moment as long as it wasn't breaking any laws) – i.e. slept-in slacks and a scrounged-up sweatshirt. Maybe he looked so Iron-Man-ish that it stunned this little walking generator of yellow journalism.

She didn't even look interesting enough to fuck.

"First," he said, "the Iron Man association, or whatever the organising people call themselves, does not in fact own the trademark on the 'Iron Man' brand. I do. I could sue them, if I really wanted, but I'm happy making an agreement about advertisement for the Stark Industries."

Chit's mouth moved like she was speaking fish. Despite having been exposed to nature documentary, Tony still couldn't parse the message.

"About your challenge – I may take part in the next race. If there is someone to take over for me in the meantime. I'm sure one of the so-called _true_ Iron Men will be happy to lend a hand with the next alien invasion, right? It's not so hard. I mean, anyone can take a nuke into space, can't they?"

"Mr Stark-"

"Yes, you can quote me on that," Tony told her magnanimously. "Now, I've got some really important stuff to talk about with Miss Potts, so you should go. Bye."

"Mr Stark-"

"You're welcome."

"But-"

Tony was ready to pull her out of the chair and throw her through the door bodily, when Pepper stepped in with her cool smile and sharp words: "I'm sure you have enough material, Miss Sobieski. Thank you for your time."

By then Happy was looming in the doorway, and although he was still angry with Tony for Pepper-related reasons, he focused the entirety of his intimidation on the chit. Who went, stammering half-intelligible thanks and goodbyes.

"What was the point of that?!" Pepper demanded.

Tony shrugged. "I've got news-"

"And you couldn't call? Or write? JARVIS is on a strike?"

"Don't put ideas into his processor-"

"Don't interrupt my work!"

"I'll make it up to you-"

"Damn right you will!" Pepper took a deep breath, settled back down behind her CEO desk and pointed a pointy finger at Tony's arc reactor. "Friday. Maria Stark charity gala. Don't even think about protesting. I _deserve_ a day off."

"You deserve two," Tony agreed.

"I don't have time for two," Pepper huffed. "What did you even want?"

"Just to tell you that Killian went ka-boom. Happy early Christmas, Pep."

Pepper remained quiet for a while, until Tony began worrying that she wasn't really happy about this turn of events. Was it possible that she had actually _liked_ that snake? Or was it just that she had wanted to extract her own pound of flesh?

Then she narrowed her eyes, nodded, and concluded: "You still have to go to the gala."

x

As the only resident Avenger in New York, Tony was contacted by the PD to come aid with gang violence. It wasn't usually his purview, but these particular cokeheads had gotten their hands on an intact Chitauri gun missed during the clean-up, and went to town with it.

Literally.

Tony went to town on them. Few of them survived, but the problem was solved, and Tony even made it to the board meeting he had promised Pepper he would attend.

He attended. He didn't fall asleep; he even paid attention for a bit, and when the morons started arguing about something stupid (someone mentioned re-starting weapons production), Tony shut them up. It went well.

No one died.

Which hadn't been a certainty after the weapons-related comment.

"What?" Tony demanded when Pepper glared at him once the Board had gone their un-merry ways. "I did well."

"You did."

"So, what's the problem?"

"You were late."

"I'm always late, Potts. What's the hold-up this time?"

"You promised," Pepper pointed out.

There just weren't words. It wasn't even as if Tony had gotten side-tracked in the workshop, or in the bed with some nubile and wiling thing. No, he was out saving Christmas and puppies in his superhero capacity. What was her problem?

She sighed. "It's just so hypocritical."

And then he got it. This was about Rhodey.

"Is it, Miss Potts?" Tony did skip meetings, he ignored paperwork he said he would do, missed deadlines and routinely scandalized the business partners, but that was all just work stuff. "I guess you can count fucking Banner as first strike against me, but when have I ever broken confidence?"

Pepper didn't have an answer for him.

"Friday," she said. "Gala."

"I'll be there, barring planetary emergencies."

x

Attending charity galas was like riding a bicycle.

You went through the same motions, over and over, and even if you stopped practicing for a long time, it took you mere minutes to get back into it. It was going to hurt in the morning, but right now you were enjoying yourself – at least Tony was, possibly thanks to his third martini.

"How are you tonight, Mr Stark?" asked the twentieth interchangeable Lulu Belle.

"I'm fiiine," he replied, intentionally drawing out the syllable to sound a little drunker than he really was. He added an eyebrow waggle, just to be completely clear. "I'm just not okay."

She laughed genteelly, clearly quite practiced at it. She looked about twenty, which would have been way too young for Tony – if Tony's net worth didn't have eleven figures.

Some matronly types swallowed them into their huddle, while they passionately discussed today's charitable cause.

Tony caught only the very tail end: "…aiding those poor people."

That was quite enough to make him want to set something on fire. He leaned in to the socialite and pretended to try and fail to whisper into her ear: "I don't care about the people."

He wondered how long she would last. How much of an ass he would have to make of himself to put her off.

"Ain't that the truth," muttered a passing waiter.

"I think the people aren't by default entitled to anything beyond basic human rights. They can deserve whatever they need. There's plenty of ways to be useful. Be smart enough, talented enough, skilled enough, diligent enough or pretty and willing enough…" He wound his arm around the woman's waist.

She let him, even leaned into him, thinking he was drunk enough that she had her five minutes of fame guaranteed. She pouted at him. "You don't really believe that, Mr Stark."

"No, not really," Tony shrugged. People were mostly cattle. And this bitch came over just to see if he would fuck her. Well, he hadn't had any in – shit, almost three weeks. He grinned. "The pretty-and-willing thing doesn't work once you're past thirty."

x

"I'm not your assistant anymore, Tony," Pepper hissed. "Don't expect me to take out your trash." She glared at him.

The naked girl in Tony's bed grumbled quietly, rolled over, and blearily squinted at them, trying to figure out what was happening.

Pepper's eyes strayed to her for a moment. There was a judgmental line deepening in the middle of her forehead, and Tony didn't need to take that from his CEO.

He shrugged. "That's Cindy….? Mindy…?"

"Lana," the girl croaked, finally beginning to orientate herself.

Tony shrugged again under the weight of Pepper's exasperation. "Whatever. Nice to meet you, Lucy. Jarvis will show you out. Bye." He pulled on yesterday's white shirt, snagged his tie and jacket from the back of the chair, and led the charge out the door.

"That's another whiny tell-all in all the gossip rags tomorrow," Pepper hissed as they traversed the corridor.

Tony grinned. "Well, my dear-"

"Don't even try it, Stark!"

"-that's rather the point."

x

The tell-all was very whiny. They even misquoted Tony about how he didn't care about the people, although the general attitude of the editor was clearly that the girl had made it all up, because Iron Man saved Manhattan at a great risk to himself, so he must have cared, right?

Pepper despaired of him.

Rhodey despaired of him, too, although he didn't tell him directly. He wrote an email, because he still apparently cared, even if Tony wasn't going to help him further his career anymore.

Happy's cold shoulder got yet colder.

He received an actual email – whoa, look at gramps mastering modern tech! – from Captain America, chiding him for behaving in a manner unbefitting of a hero.

None of that was the point. The point was that the article trended hard enough to make a blip even in international media.


	5. The Peripatetic Rage Monster

Chapter Five: The Peripatetic Rage Monster

x

Tony was beginning to believe that his newly re-gained reputation of an asshole playboy wasn't doing the trick. He got dressed, glaring at the naked back of the third girl this week. It was a slow week. Some Iron Man stuff had gotten in the way, and then SHIELD got involved so, instead of cruising, Tony had been sitting in a conference room with Fury and his stooges for long enough to grow moss.

Jay flashed a warning.

Tony walked out of his bedroom and, after a short reflection, decided to remain in the living room where he and Banner had lived together for a short while. Call him a manipulative bastard, but after he had gone through all this bother, he wasn't going to soften the final blow.

Banner stepped out of the elevator almost silently, but spotted immediately that he was being watched. He took in the whole room, noticed the pair of high-heels in the middle of the carpet and the handbag on one of the armchairs, and his face screwed up.

Tony watched as he clenched his fists, turned his face away and took deep, slow breaths. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Hold. Inhale. One of his relaxation techniques.

"Not going to hulk out after all?" Tony inquired.

Banner glared at him. "You know what I'm like."

Not really – that was the whole point of reinventing himself – but if Banner wanted to be inconsistently held up to _Robert's_ character, Tony had zero problems with it.

"You know what _I_ am like." Not really either, but the tendency to follow wherever his dick was pointing at any given time had not changed. "It's not going to be a problem while you're around. You've always been a black hole to me." Tony paused and repeated to himself what he had just said. "Okay, that sounded better in my head, but you know what I meant."

Banner had a gravity to himself that attracted all Tony's attention and swallowed it up without leaving any for anyone else, and he made time seem to slow down in his vicinity.

"But when you're gone," Tony added, "all bets are off."

Banner nodded. Even he, whose metaphorical green monster was possibly bigger than his literal green monster, had to admit that was fair.

"Don't tell anyone I'm here," Banner demanded.

Tony nodded. "Cross my heart."

x

Living with a rage monster in his closet was the most fun Tony had had in a while. He had Banner in his lab – and they did science, too – and in his quarters. He pretty much abandoned the penthouse and relocated downstairs again.

Pepper watched him like a hawk after he had rapidly stopped making a gigantic ass of himself in public and having one-night-stands like they were going out of fashion (as if that would ever happen!), but eventually decided that the whole episode was just Tony's weird version of a rebound, and the current state was the new normal.

Tony let her have her sweet delusion on the basis that telling the truth would have been TMI.

Banner _ate_ through the orbital station project and when he hit the limits of his knowledge without spotting inconsistencies, he decided to _trust_ Tony on it.

"I own this huge chunk of ground somewhere in Colorado," Tony suggested. "Map, Jay?"

JARVIS displayed the location on the wall.

"Used to be an Army base," Tony explained, "but it's been dismantled and repurposed by Howard. I mostly used it for testing explosives."

"We can build the thing on the ground and just send it up?" Banner asked, shocked.

Tony grinned. "Jarvis can even pilot it to a limited extent."

"Okay," Banner said. His eyes were wide and reflected the holograms. "Okay, let's build this." He didn't quite express any emotion, but Tony dared guess at some cautious hope somewhere behind the façade of hard-won cynicism.

x

Possibly to test if he really was being a good boy again, Pepper insisted that Tony attend yet another gala. Tony went, schmoozed and, because he wasn't anyone's puppet (not even Pepper's), once again pretended that he was drunker than he really was and made an ass of himself.

This time in front of reporters. Chances were Pepper wouldn't ask him to do another dog-and-pony show for a while.

Also, there was a scathing email in his inbox from the venerable Captain America again, assuring Tony that he was a great disappointment to Mr Rogers, and would have been an even bigger disappointment to His Assholeness Howard Stark himself (like it wasn't Howard that had taught all this to his son and heir). In any case, the vituperation was followed by a categorical refusal to admit Tony into the Avengers Club.

Because somehow Rogers had still not noticed that Tony was _not interested_.

Or, possibly, Romanov was still convinced that the surest way to get Tony to want something was to dangle it in front of his face and go 'neener, neener, you can't have one'. Because it had worked _once_. When Tony was mostly dead and a bit delirious from _heavy metal poisoning_.

"What's funny?" Banner inquired, padding out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam and face-planting into the bed.

"Rogers and his permanently twisted knickers." Tony nudged him with the edge of the tablet and watched him tense as he forcefully stopped the reflexive swing.

Banner took the tablet and, in the absence of his spectacles, squinted at the writing. Then he placed the tablet on top of the blankets where Tony could pick it up again.

"Not Rogers," he concluded.

"Romanov?" Tony inquired, following his earlier line of thought.

Banner nodded into the pillow. "Or some analyst somewhere in a cubicle. Lucky us, they still haven't figured out fuck-all."

"What's with the dirty mouth?" Tony asked. That was a little atypical.

"Pissed," Banner shot back.

He was still there, though, sharing space with Tony. He was still semi-talkative. Weird.

"More than usual?"

"I fucking hate you, Stark," Banner muttered, muffled by the pillow.

Tony frowned. That was a little hurtful. Especially since he wasn't aware of having done anything to deserve it today. He hadn't even drunk enough for it to be noticeable now, four hours later.

"This is like a dream," Banner said quietly. "All the good things I can't have, but want, and it's right here. It seems like it's reachable if I try. But it's not. It's all fucking ephemeral; it just makes it harder when I go back to the real life."

"And by real life you mean the jungles of India." Tony kicked the tablet off the mattress. It hit the floor with a dull thump, sustaining no damage at all. He stretched in the free space alongside Banner and tried to imagine what it was like to be him.

Failed.

"Guess our realities don't intersect a lot," he admitted.

Banner opened his eyes, looking so tired he might have been hundred and fifty. "You are making me your lifeline, but I am a dead man walking."

That was almost funny, given how Banner was clinging to Tony as if Tony was his line to sanity. Although, to be fair, it wasn't Tony himself – it was his inventions that Banner craved. That he had come back for.

"Is this a metaphor? 'cause I'm not really good with them."

Banner sighed. "Tony, how much radiation was there when the lab blew up?"

"Actually, I've been trying to get my hands on the readings-"

"Far too much to survive, okay? Too much. I'm not like Captain America. I wasn't _improved_. I died in there, and whatever the hell kind of monster inside me that could survive it crawled out. It sometimes wears me like clothes, but that doesn't mean that I am a person. I'm a ghost, Tony. I resemble that guy you knew, because I was made out of his cadaver, but I'm not him." He reached up, grabbed a fistful of his own hair and pulled, hard. "I have no idea what the hell I am."

Tony laughed. "Shit, that's the funniest story I've heard in a while, and the other day Barton spent several hours in a competition with Romanov about who could pan the deadest." Neither of them was half as good at it as Coulson had been, but Tony didn't bother informing them. They knew, anyway. He strongly suspected it was some weird Spies & Assassins Mourning Ritual (TM).

"Tony-"

"Okay, fine. Hypothesis. Say that you're this whole new person that inherited Robert's face, and body, and memories, and habits and _genius_ … _and_ apparently also proclivity for other handsome geniuses. The only thing you didn't inherit is the tendency to express that proclivity with your fists – the Hulk got all of that. So, you know what? I like this new Robert better than I liked the old one."

"Don't call me Robert," Banner growled, eyes going a little green.

Tony's dick still reacted to it as pointedly as it did at the start. "Whatcha gonna do about it, Robert? Punch me in the face?"

"No." The green went away. Banner met Tony's eye with the gravity of a neutron star. "I'll just move somewhere where no one calls me that."

"…okay. Point taken. And hammered in." Tony gulped, hard. He was dazed and confused by how much he needed Banner to stay in his life. Where the fuck had that come from? Why the desperation? Even Banner had noticed how unnaturally hard he was clinging, but nothing seemed to be helping him stop.

He grabbed for Banner's hand, as if manual contact somehow helped him convey any measure of sincerity. "Don't leave me? I get it – this whole re-inventing yourself thing. Robert is dead. This new arguably zombie guy, that's Bruce. Okay?" He paused as a thought alit in the more whacked part of his brain. "Hey, does this make me a necrophiliac?"

Banner gave him – and their joined hands – a blood-curdling stare for a while. Then he said: "I have no idea."

"Well, call me Bella Swan and dip me in chocolate." Tony shuffled closer like a seal and ran his palm over Banner's ribs up to his shoulder blades. The skin was hot. "Bruce likes chocolate, too, right?"

"Asks the man offering some sugar," Banner muttered, but contentedly let himself be aggressively cuddled. And kissed. And kissed some more – there was a lot of skin on display there that Tony happily attended to.

Banner hadn't even bothered with clothes after his shower; from him that was asking to be fucked, and since he never showed the slightest disagreement with what Tony was doing, simply lay there and enjoyed – the lazy bastard – it was a bit of a weird experience. Not unsatisfying, but a little like simulated somnophilia.

Or – and that gave Tony a pause mid-stroke and threw off his rhythm – like the necrophilia he had referenced. Okay, this wasn't funny. Fortunately, Banner was breathing, and his heartbeat was strong and steady, so Tony went on to achieve the little death for them both.

Banner didn't speak until afterwards, when Tony was already falling asleep.

"My point stands, Tony," he whispered into the darkness. "You can't make me responsible for your wellbeing. I am not accepting that responsibility."

x

In the morning Banner was gone.

JARVIS confirmed that he had gathered up his stuff and snuck out earlier, while it was still pitch black outside – as it tended to be in the days following Christmas.

Tony momentarily felt like an idiot. "Did he really come over just to _spend Christmas_ with me?" They didn't even celebrate Christmas – neither of them. They usually hunkered down in their lab or their workshop or their… their _patch of jungle_ and waited until the damn season blew over.

"It does seem so, sir," JARVIS allowed.

"Next time tell me if he looks like he's about to do a runner." There better be a next time. If this was Banner's idea of goodbye it sucked, and Tony didn't feel like there had been any catharsis.

"Miss Potts has put an art show on your itinerary, sir," Jay informed him. "My condolences."

"Oh, this will be fun," Tony growled. "Banner's fucked off, so I'm going to pull. And I don't even fucking care what Pepper will think about it."

JARVIS ruminated for a minute and then decided: "I shall reroute those condolences to Miss Potts."

After half a day spent in the workshop, redirecting his anger into creativity, Tony felt a little invigorated, and also a little more calmly spiteful. He went through the grooming routine and decided that, fuck it, if anyone had problems with him wearing neon green sneakers with a Zegna suit they could kiss his billionaire ass.

"Once more into the breach," Tony grumbled.

"They are merely civilians," JARVIS assured him with the blithe naivety of someone that could hide from all the concentrated mindlessness in his circuitry.

"Civilians are this abstract amorphous blob that needs to be protected. I don't want to touch it. I won't touch it. Don't make me." Not that he minded touching select ones in a very specific way. Which was to be his reward for suffering through the utter suck of today.

"Well, I do have something for you that might make it less of an onus, sir."

Tony climbed into the back of his Bentley, ignored Happy's glare in the rearview mirror, and pulled out his phone. "Gimme, baby."

Jay displayed an email of such delicious and imaginative filthiness that Tony arrived at the party flushed, terribly horny, and challenged to keep it in his pants until Banner came back to relieve the pressure for him.

Tony gritted his teeth, struggled through the pain – and won.

x

"Are you actually in an inventing zone, or are you just tinkering?"

Tony sighed and set the soldiering lamp down onto the counter.

Pepper made herself comfortable on his couch, careful to sit on the non-oil-stained half, and patted the mattress next to her. Tony obediently deposited himself there and let Pepper place a tablet onto his thighs.

"Cellulose-free?" he teased.

"In all your paper-related ranting you never mentioned that your lobby for modernization was at heart environmentally conscious," Pepper accused him perfidiously.

"I'm pretty sure I ranted about rainforests somewhere in the middle there," Tony replied absently, mostly focused on the proposal he was reading. "Carbon footprint rhetoric is more Banner's shtick. I just build all this clean energy shit – it's your job to hire people to talk it up."

He didn't realize his mistake until Pepper sagely nodded and put her hand on his shoulder. "I'm over being angry with you about him. You can tell me if you miss him."

Tony stared at her. What? How did she get that from him making an offhand mention… he hadn't meant to mention the man, except that he had been concentrating on something else at the time (Pepper's wily gambit with the tablet distracted him) and his brain kept gravitating to the topic of Robert Banner.

His personal black hole.

"You're in contact with him," Pepper guessed, and he wasn't fast enough with a denial to be convincing. "Good. I wasn't sure but… I'm glad for you."

"You are," Tony deadpanned.

"He did save your life. That tells me a lot about him. And he – Rhodey said that he made you happy. I don't doubt that you can lure him back if you put your mind to it."

Of course Tony could lure Banner back – and _had_. That was the easy part. "But I won't be able to get him to stay." Best case scenario: Tony would be always find a way to get Banner to return. He wasn't as much of an optimist as to believe that might happen. On the other hand, his life expectancy wasn't very long, so maybe he could do it for long enough… "That man hates me."

Pepper stopped gently touching his shoulder and smacked it instead. "He loves you."

"You'll find this hard to believe, Pepperpot, but with a certain subset of people there's not enough difference to see with a naked eye-"

"That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard you say!" she snapped.

"No, it isn't. I say stupid shit all the time."

"You do. Which should illustrate how _enormously_ stupid you just sounded!"

Tony rolled his eyes. Pepper was an astonishingly acute businesswoman, but she still believed that the blueprints for interpersonal relationships she learned from romantic comedies worked universally.

It was like she hadn't met Tony. Or like she didn't believe he was real.

"It's not embarrassing to love someone," she implored.

"You're so hung up on the word! Every time it's spoken it means something else. If it's even spoken."

He felt the shock going through Pepper's body. She stiffened and stared at him. For a while it was uncertain which way she would react – get angry at him for being a sociopath or an unfeeling asshole or whatever this statement might have painted him to be… or pity him.

She sighed.

Pity it was, then.

"You didn't know I love you?" she asked in a soft, plaintive voice.

Tony frowned. "No. How can you tell that sort of thing?"

Pepper sighed again.

x

Banner was only a little startled when the Iron Man armor landed on the concrete outside the dilapidated yet still habitable house at the edge of the former base somewhere in Colorado. The concrete cracked – further – under the gold titanium boots, and a nearby structure finally lost the fight against gravity.

Iron Man walked forth toward the doorway, in which Banner stood like a reluctant welcoming committee.

"Postapo Army Chic," Tony commented in the computerized voice of his superhero alter ego. "Very not you."

Banner sighed. "I take what I can get. It's far away from anyone too squishy, and the landlord didn't ask for rent."

"He'll take it out in trade," Tony quipped.

Banner looked skeptical, but didn't seem too bothered by being felt up by gauntlets. Tony, sadly, didn't get anything out from it – aside from having the absolute pleasure of watching Banner's reactions.

The man started out long-suffering, which wasn't a lot of surprise in between him having spent several days alone at a ruin of a former military base and being molested by a suit of armor. He found the humorous side quickly enough, and by the time his back was pressed against the chest plate and his wrists were clasped in the vice-like grip of metal fingers, his breathing indicated either panic or arousal.

"Tell me you didn't build a dildo in the armor," he muttered, in the resigned tone of someone expecting to be disappointed.

Tony deactivated his connection to the armor, opened the back door, stepped into the room and met Banner's eye through his Stark Glasses. His grin widened. "I didn't. But it's a great idea for Mark 19."

"You bastard," Banner breathed. He tried to buck against the inert armor's hold, but without going green he had no chance of freeing himself.

He was still in control of the situation, of course. Technically. But the stakes had been raised really fucking high.

"Want a safeword?" Tony inquired, because he was not _that_ kind of an asshole.

"Would 'please, stop' work?"

"Absolutely." They weren't playing _that_ kind of game today.

Banner made an attempt to shrug, which was curtailed by the hold the armor had on him. "Then I'm good."

Tony took his time with the buttons of Banner's shirt, because Banner would probably wear button-down shirts even if the world had really gone to Hell and they were actually trapped in some post-apocalyptic nightmare in the middle of Colorado. He wondered if this counted as double-teaming – was he having sexual relations with his armor? – or simply as restraints. Banner took it with little more apropos than he had taken a silk tie a few weeks ago.

"You have suicidally little respect for the fact that I might lose control of my subconscious and squash you."

Tony unbuckled Banner's belt. If Mr Hair-Trigger was wearing a belt, he wasn't seriously worried about hulking out. "I don't have a lot of respect for anything."

"Most people want to feel respected," Banner pointed out, acting like this didn't concern him personally and he was just an observer of the situation where a destitute nuclear physicist was restrained and divested of his pants by an amoral billionaire as payment for protection from a lot of bloodthirsty military-type people.

Tony had to crouch down to take off Banner's shoes and get rid of the pants completely, which brought him eye to eye with Banner's half-interested cock. He nudged it on his way up, just to let it know it had been noticed. "People don't need to be respected as long as they are _loved_ … whatever that means, I already had this conversation with Pep-"

"And some people don't need to be _loved_ as long as they are used," Banner retorted, accusatory and pointedly looking at Tony the whole time.

"Oh, sir, your sweet words seduce me so…" He gripped Banner's ass and gave him a little boost so Banner could semi-comfortably wrap his legs around Tony's waist. "You use me, I use you – you want reassurance that I'm not _just_ using you?"

Banner huffed in his ear. "I know what it looks like when you're _just_ using someone." His stomach muscles clenched to the density of granite, keeping him twisted up between Tony and the Iron Man armor without risking spraining his wrists.

Maybe this wasn't Tony's best idea. But, whatever. Banner could ask to be let go at any time.

He didn't. He took Tony's fingers and Tony's cock and guessing from the little whines he made somewhere in there it was a little painful, but he still didn't say anything. So Robert – the guy that desperately craved punishment – was probably still in there.

Tony could roll with it.

He didn't mind that Banner cried, the emotional masochist. Banner didn't mind crying either – case in point, _masochist_ – and got sort of clingy after the armor let him go. Although, to be fair, that might have been because his knees didn't work.

x

They got around to science, too.

Tony had driven a truck full of his more sensitive technology; JARVIS had piloted the suit as their air support, just in case someone had noticed Tony Stark unaccompanied with a truckload of interesting tech, and decided to get greedy.

Nobody did.

Incidentally, JARVIS has categorically refused to take part in ambushing Banner for reunion sex, so Tony had had to park out of sight and then remotely drive the suit the rest of the way to their new home.

It was so shabby that Tony wanted a shower every time he crossed the living room, but it was still better than a cave in Afghanistan. And, well – Banner was there.

Banner was there with a pencil stuck behind his ear – where the fuck had he even gotten one of those? – and a pot of coffee – as in an actual pot, not a coffee pot – and a ladle to ladle that coffee into mugs. Was this what camping was like? Tony had had a lot of exotic experiences, but engineering an orbital station in the middle of nowhere while Banner assisted, conspired with JARVIS and criticised Tony's math took the fucking cake.

"I heard that!" Tony yelled over the roar and rattle of the fabrication units. He hadn't, of course, but he could extrapolate.

Banner bit down on the end of his ballpoint pen – where the fuck was he getting this stuff? – and thus freed his left hand for a rude gesture. Had he been writing with his left hand? Tony was pretty sure Banner was a rightie…?

Since Jay not so politely told him that there was nothing he could do now and he had to wait for the parts to be crafted before he could start assembling, he decided to take Banner's rude gesture as an invitation and go over there. He distracted the man with a kiss while he snuck a peak at what he was drawing _in his notebook_ – holy god of stationery, was this for real? Carbon footprint Tony's much neglected ass.

Unfortunately, another truck of raw materials arrived then, and Tony's obnoxious A.I. forced him to go and deal with the delivery without giving him a chance to be properly debauched.

After the truck left, Banner wound a fugly, scratchy plaid blanket around himself (where the hell had he found that thing?) and came out to survey the unloaded goods.

He walked around the boxes, examined labels and went through some rough mental calculations while JARVIS operated the crawler forklifts that came to take the boxes into their improvised construction hall (which, yes, was actually a tent, Tony was well aware). _Camping_. But, he could power this whole production with an arc reactor, so it wasn't like anyone would notice in time to bother him about safety regulations.

He built a miniaturized arc reactor in a cave in Afghanistan (yes, that _was_ his excuse for everything and yes, he _did_ intend to use it for the rest of his life), he could construct an orbital station in a fucking tent if he wanted to.

"That alone," Banner said, encompassing the recent delivery with an arm gesture, "cost more than I have made in my life so far."

Nice of him to mention it, but Tony _had_ actually noticed that this wasn't an investment that would be returned.

"I thought a diamond ring was too cheap."

Wait a second. What had just come out of his mouth?

Tony must have looked very horrified by his own statement, because Banner laughed at him with gusto. Unwilling to dig himself in deeper, Tony decided that JARVIS obviously had their building materials under control, and Tony was free to go (hide) inside. Incidentally, it was fucking cold out there. Which sometimes happened in January.

Banner came in after him, found him scowling at his tablet, and scuttled into the kitchen. Five minutes later he returned with heated sausage and beans that had undoubtedly come from a can, and which Tony suspected was a traditional camping grub.

Banner made himself as comfortable as one could on the hard chair and pinned Tony with a mightily amused look. "Despite the princely engagement gift, I'm going to have to say no to your proposal."

"Asshole," Tony grumbled. But he couldn't really expect that Robert would let him off easy after a brainfart of those proportions.

Later that night – or, more likely, in the next morning – they lay together in bed (not sleeping bags, fortunately, Tony wasn't interested in that level of authenticity for his camping experience). Banner had finally put Tony out of his misery, stopped playing the pliant sex toy and fucked him.

Maybe Tony had finally deserved it, in this little game of checks and balances they were apparently playing again. Tony had missed this – had missed _Robert_ , who could claim he was now _Bruce_ until he was green in the face, but Tony knew better.

"I should have known you would look so smug," Banner groused.

Tony grinned. "I convinced you to _go steady_ with me again." He had every reason to be smug.

Banner sighed at him. "It won't be the same."

" _Duh_." Tony knocked on the rim of his arc reactor with his knuckles. "We're superheroes."

"I won't be able to hit you," Banner pointed out, although he sounded like he wanted to hit Tony, a lot. "And you won't be able to dehumanize me, because either the other guy comes out, or I leave to prevent him coming out." His eyes glowed a little in the darkness, but just the usual way eyes glowed. No green in sight. "And make no mistake, Tony. This time I will actually be able to leave you. Because my fear of the other guy is a lot greater than my fear of failure or loneliness or whatever it was that kept me with you."

Tony gave him a mockingly chaste kiss, complete with the smacking sound. "I think your mental state will go fabulously with my addiction and anxiety attacks." Which sucked, but not too much. They were used enough to nightmares by now that they could share a bed.

Even if things weren't getting better, they weren't getting worse.

"I'll try to keep you from breaking the world," Banner assured him drolly. "But no promises. A big part of me really likes breaking stuff."

x

"Tony, tell me why I have a protest from NASA on my desk."

"Hi Pepper," Tony replied. "How are you? I'm elbow deep in my half-finished orbital station-"

That was a lie. Veronica was complete; JARVIS was running the second round of diagnostics, and the instant Tony had the official permit to fire her up, up she was going.

"-which I guess is the answer to your question."

"…this had better not be a joke, Stark-"

"Chill, Pepper," Tony said blithely, "I'm serious as heart attack."

She hated that joke, he recalled belatedly.

He took a deep draught of his mojito, which he deserved because despite _going steady_ with Tony, Banner had fucked off again. Tony was learning to hate Colorado. He was stunned that Banner could stand it alone here for several days, without even JARVIS to keep him company.

Then again, Banner was used to worse.

"Why am I only hearing about this now?" demanded his angry CEO. "And from the _goshdarn_ NASA? You didn't even have the courtesy to tell me yourself!"

"It's Iron Man tech," Tony replied in his reasonable voice, almost sure to anger her further. "You don't like the Iron Man. You told me you didn't want to hear about the Iron Man-"

"Get back to New York and deal with this yourself," Pepper snapped. "I'm not managing your pet projects while you're on a vacation."

"Aye, aye, Cap'n," Tony replied to the dial tone.

x

With Tony too busy to keep an eye on him, Banner flitted in and out of his life; sometimes he stayed for a few days, sometimes for a few weeks, and never made any promises about when he would turn up next. He was aloof and unashamed and always, always in control.

On the first of April – Fool's Day, which Tony found appropriate enough – Tony's pet orbital station lifted off. There was no cloud of smoke to commemorate the occasion. No pretty video for the popular science online community to enjoy.

In fact, aside from some administrative people who had been paid well enough to stop getting in Tony's way out of jealousy that his satellite was better than theirs, no one even noticed anything happening.

Tony's suspicions about Asgard and Thor were confirmed later the same month. Space Vikings had run into some trouble, and instead of dealing with it like the advanced civilization they allegedly were, they decided to use Earth as a battlefield.

From a strategic point of view Tony understood the decision. Asgardians could walk off back home and leave a lot of damage behind without giving it a second thought. If they had done all that battling at home, they would have had to clean up afterwards, and what kind of alien god would lower himself to chores?

Sadly, Loki didn't take Tony up on the offer of a drink. On account of allegedly being dead.

And then, in the middle of a sweltering August night that he spent frustratingly alone in his bed in Malibu, Tony asked JARVIS how long it had been since Banner had last made an appearance.

The answer was eighty-two days.

In the next afternoon Tony went out for a stroll on the beach and picked up a curvy, smiley volleyball player.


	6. We Band of Kissing Cousins

Chapter Six: We Band of Kissing Cousins

x

Credit where credit is due:

"Heil this, motherfucker!" is a reference to _Steve Rogers at 100: Celebrating Captain America on Film_ by _eleveninches, Febricant, hellotailor, M_Leigh, neenya_ and _tigrrmilk_. It is an amazing work of art with a huge cultural impact, and chances are that you have already read it, but if you have not, then I recommend it to everybody. To be found at archive of our own. The exact address is /works/ 1599293 - after you remove the spaces, because there is some really aggressive programming on ffnet that won't let me put the damn address here without eating two thirds of it.

x

"Again?" Pepper despaired, exercising an admirable strength of will to refrain from throwing the magazine in her hands across the room. From what little he could see via the feed, Tony had graced the front cover. And pages 5, 6 and 7.

Tony was a little too busy exercising his strength of will to keep his excesses within the limits of normal for him: promiscuity, a bit of gambling and a lot of booze were alright, potentially suicidal dares and drugs were not.

He didn't want to go back to his twenties. Especially not because of Robert Banner. Too much irony. He didn't even remember exactly what they had taken, just that there had been a lot of it, with the kind of variety a million-dollar trust-fund baby could afford and the kind a genius chemist could cook. Which was a lot of variety.

"Tony?" Pepper spoke again, pulling him out of the contemplation. "Tony, are you listening to me?"

"I always listen to you, creampuff," Tony lied.

"Are you okay? Jarvis, is he okay?"

Calumny! Tony was outraged by this outrageous calumny!

"Mr Stark is indisposed," Jay said like the diplomatic diplomat he was. Where had he gotten that? It wasn't from Tony. Or Rhodey. Or even Pep. Peppy-Pep could smile like honey and poison your bank accounts.

"…drunk," Pepper concluded. "He's drinking again? I thought we were done with that! He's stopped! Well… toned it down to almost healthy levels but…"

Tony stuck out his tongue at the nearest camera. And fluffed up his hair. He'd bet he looked kinda like Einstein.

"If I may…?" Jay prevaricated.

"What is it, Jarvis?" demanded the extant chief executive officer.

And Jay, because he was a treacherous traitor that betrayed, blabbed. "For the past fourteen months, Mr Stark's periods of relative sobriety coincided with Dr Banner's presence."

Tony had the very rare opportunity to hear Virginia Potts curse like a sailor with a hangnail.

x

"Pepper?" Tony inquired blearily, squinting into the dimly lit workshop. "Whoa, babe. Babes. Haven't had this dream for a while."

He reached out. Both Peppers deftly avoided his grab.

They usually didn't do this. Also, they usually wore less clothes. Lingerie, if anything, but mostly they didn't bother. Oh, and there was that one time with one of them in the Iron Man armor-

"Why, Tony?!" they demanded.

It was the headache that alerted Tony to the fact that he wasn't dreaming. Pepper – Pepper Potts, his once-girlfriend, who had broken up with him and didn't hate him, and continued to direct his Fortune 500 company to the best of her considerable ability – had come to pull his drunk ass out of his workshop in the middle of the ni-

Oh. In the middle of this fine day.

He was handed a glass. He drank. It was one of those disgusting alka-seltzer mass-produced hangover remedies. Robert would have been appalled.

"…Banner's the only one that talks to me," Tony explained. He emptied the glass. His stomach swam. The workshop swam. Both Peppers swam.

Both Peppers despaired of him. "Plenty of people talk to you! Your investors talk to you. SHIELD agents talk to you. I talk to you! I'm talking to you right now."

Tony stared at them.

Peppers got it. "Dr Banner is the only one who talks science to you on your level."

Not quite, but almost. And Banner had the same… innovative type of thinking as Tony. He saw potentials and built paths from existing solutions to those visions, and if he wasn't as good at engineering… so what? Tony liked lording his superiority over anybody.

Peppers nudged two empty bottles with the toes of their pumps. "You're drinking out of… _loneliness_?"

"I try my best, Miss Potts," said JARVIS, "but I am still merely Mr Stark's extension."

"Sorry, Jay," Tony muttered, closing his eyes with the intention of going back to sleep to find the dream Pepper (or Peppers, he wouldn't mind two of them in the dream) who had no qualms whatsoever about fucking him. "Not your fault."

"And yet, Mr Stark," JARVIS replied with as much despondency as he could effect.

"Don't you dare go back to sleep!" insisted the waking-life Peppers. "Up. Up!"

"Stop yelling," Tony complained.

"How does this help?!" Peppers demanded helplessly.

"It's a reverse relativity thing, Peps," Tony explained. "Booze has this way of contracting time and dilating space. Time runs by faster when I'm buzzed, and then it's tomorrow. It's always tomorrow. I'm a futurist."

Peppers shouted, something wordless and unintelligible and with that guttural sound people usually made when they were either very sick or professional death metal singers. "Get up right now, you useless lump of an engineer! If you're not out of the shower in ten minutes, I'll beggar you!"

Tony staggered roughly in the direction of the nearest bathroom.

x

Tony was sober enough to only see one of Pepper – and one of Happy, and one of Rhodey. Seeing all three of these people together amounted to an emergency meeting, so it followed (preceded?) that there was an emergency to worry about.

It couldn't have been Tony's bender. Each of these three people was used to Tony's benders and well equipped to deal with them alone.

"So," Tony said, lowering himself into a chair in an honest-to-god conference room _slowly_ , because things were hurting. Not hurting like enthusiastic sex last night – hurting like not having slept in a proper bed for a week. And being on the wrong fucking side of forty. "Where's the fire?"

His closest people exchanged worried expressions.

Rhodey pushed a tablet over the gleaming plastic – formica? was that formica? – surface of the table. It landed within arm's reach of Tony, who pulled it closer and started reading. He was glad for his sunglasses now, since he was pretty sure that his eyes were getting bigger and bigger behind the lenses.

"So…" He pulled a mock-thoughtful duckface. "A warrant for Cap's arrest-"

" _Neutralization_ ," Rhodey cut in. "It's a kill order. I know you don't like the guy, Tony, but even you have to admit that this is absurd."

"The Nazi kind of absurd," Tony agreed. This had state-mandated decommission all over it. Oh, how poetic. Even after seventy years frozen inside an iceberg, Stevie Rogers, the junkie next door, was still fighting Nazis full throttle.

"How do you mean-?" Poor Rhodey didn't even know what to ask.

Well, between the poster boy for the Chair Force with his once shiny armor hidden under the fugly new paintjob and the perpetually bored billionaire inventor, which one had fought more terrorist organizations? Spoilers: it was _not_ the phone Colonel with his fancy silver oak leaf.

"Jay," Tony said, too headachy to deal with this particular clusterfuck so early in the afternoon, "crack it. Crack it all. Gut SHIELD if you have to, because I know that if Cap fucked up enough to dunk half of the West Coast in the ocean, Fury would still have him come out the other end smelling like the fucking roses. That's the fucking point of exhuming the fucking state symbol."

"Director Fury is dead," JARVIS reminded.

"Yes," Tony agreed, "so I just read."

"You don't believe the report?" Pepper asked pragmatically, because she was very hot – _competent_ , that is what Tony meant, not that there was a huge difference between those two descriptors – going through presumably her own version of the report on her personal tablet.

Not S.I. business then. Iron Man stuff. If Pepper was dealing with Iron Man stuff personally and _willingly_ , things really must have been in the crapper.

"I wouldn't believe Fury if he told me he was an Afro-American male. That coat can hide a lot of stuff. And have you seen the photostatic veils out of SHIELD's lab? In fact, how do I know you're not Romanov-"

"I'll quit, Stark," Pepper threatened.

Tony considered this threat seriously. "It's something she would have known to say if she were impersonating you. She did her stint as-"

"My P.A., I know, Tony, I was there." The rage in Pepper's eyes certainly looked authentic.

Tony shrugged. "Fair enough. So, Fury may or may not be dead, but in any case some fucker high up in SHIELD or, more likely, in the World Security Council-"

"The people who authorized the Manhattan nuclear strike last year?" Pepper inquired off-handedly.

"The what?!"

Ah. Apparently Air Force Lieutenant Colonels weren't high enough up the chain to be informed about these little intelligence agencies' mishaps.

"Yep," Tony agreed with a mirthless grin, "those _people_. For a given value of 'people'. In any case, someone is scapegoating Steven Rogers in ways that are frankly absurd even in legalese, and legalese is a language devised to make absurd things sound non-absurd, so it leads me to believe that this is someone getting Captain America out of the way."

He paused to down a plastic cup of water – Banner would have had a conniption at the amount of plastic cups stacked by every S.I. water cooler, and Tony had vindictively grabbed two, taking vicarious revenge on the environment.

"I've met Captain America. He's a puppet. He can be maneuvered, and if some asshole out there wants to destroy him they're either stupid or it's personal. I don't think they're stupid, 'cause Fury wouldn't play possum – or die, that's still an option – for someone stupid."

"And who's got personal issues with Captain America?" Rhodey asked rhetorically.

"It's still a reach," Pepper pointed out.

Tony shrugged. "Yeah, Jay actually cracked a couple of their firewalls while I was in the shower. I already knew it was Hydra when I got here."

Rhodey face-palmed. "I hate you, little man."

x

"Days like these, I miss Loki," Tony whined. "Back in my day, supervillains used to have class."

"Lack of class?!" Rhodey would have spat nails if he had any. Aside from those on his fingers and toes, of course. "That's what's bothering you?!"

"Strung a little high?" Tony quipped. This was so familiar that he barely even remembered he was supposed to be pushing Rhodey out of the inner circle. Nigh on thirty years of habit were an iron shirt, ha ha. Still, he passed over two fingers of scotch. "On the rocks. You're off duty, Colonel, might as well enjoy it-"

"Tony, we're in the middle of a security nightmare-"

"Nah." Tony watched the holoscreens spread around the penthouse. Pepper was sipping on her second glass of champagne, doing a little light work and monitoring Tony's alcohol intake.

Tony was actually so busy seconding JARVIS' virtual incursion into SHIELD that he was only on his second glass, too. Rhodey was really getting on his nerves with all the jitteriness. Nerves of steel Tony's ass.

"Sir," Jay piped in before Tony snapped at his friend to go for a damn flight and clear his head. "I have uncovered concerning software. Please review Project Insight immediately."

"That's the one with the new Helicarriers?" Tony asked.

Stark Industries had made good business on the engines for those. Fury with four Helicarriers was a funny notion. _Hydra_ with four Helicarriers raised all sorts of alarms. And, whoa, look at it – they had scheduled Tony for termination in three days. How nice of them.

"I'll call Legal," Pepper remarked, and made a note in her itinerary. Under the men's quizzical stares she explained: "Tony's got that look. He's going to blow up people, and you know the fallout always rains down on the company."

"If I might make a suggestion?" said the resident A.I.

"By all means, Jarvis," Pepper bade him.

"If we are not invested in Captain Rogers', Agent Romanov's or Director Fury's survival, there is no need for the intervention of the Iron Man. In fact, I am in the perfect position to _acquire_ the complete contents of the enemy's servers and initiate self-destruct on most of the infiltrated vessels."

Tony grinned. And couldn't stop grinning. It was all he could do to hold back from outright cackling.

"Oh god," Pepper moaned. "Of all the things you could inherit from your programmer…" She downed the rest of her glass, poured another, downed that, and had to be stopped by Rhodey from doing the same with a third one.

Tony rubbed his palms together. "I am so proud of you, Jarvis. Let's do this."

x

"Sir?" JARVIS said about thirty hours later. He sounded uncharacteristically subdued.

"Yeah, buddy?"

"I… have uncovered a file in SHIELD's servers that you need to view. But I am concerned about your reaction. Perhaps you might ask Mr Rhodes or Mr Hogan-"

"No." Now Tony was worried. If there was something that could make _him_ go green, metaphorically speaking, it had to be a huge, stinking pile of shit. JARVIS wasn't giving him any details, and without having at least an idea of what he would see, he didn't want to bring anyone else into it.

"Show me," he ordered.

Jay made a show of his reluctance, but he obeyed.

Tony watched his parents die in surprisingly high definition. He sat in front of the screen for a long time after the video had ended. He wasn't so much deciding what to do next, as he was trying to rediscover some semblance of sanity.

So, by chance Howard hadn't actually killed his mother drunk-driving. Statistics were a bitch. And so were Hydra.

They should have let it be. They shouldn't have come back quarter of a century later to finish the job with Tony; might have even gotten away with it. Well, they were asking for it, weren't they?

"Good job, baby," Tony said to his A.I., smiling a wry smile. "Go on as we planned. And, oh, if you get the chance, salt the earth afterwards."

Honestly, Tony didn't have two fucks left to give about what would happen to the miserable remnants of SHIELD in the aftermath.

x

Rhodey dropped back in at T minus thirty-one hours (of Project Insight's projected commencement – projected onto the wall of the room, too) and found Tony contemplating the pros and cons of going after the Winter Soldier loaded for bear. Or for tank.

"I'm worried about you, Tones," Rhodey professed. "You never went people hunting before."

Tony was tempted to stare like he was questioning the intelligence of the speaker of that outrageous sentence, but fortunately he wore sunglasses that protected him from making such a theatrical gesture. What did Rhodey think Tony had been doing in Gulmira? And what about those five and quarter illegal caches of Stark weaponry he had destroyed since?

Maybe he went hunting with intelligent missiles and lasers and repulsors instead of a rifle – but did that make it less of a sport?

"Thanks for confirming that for me, honeybear," Tony said dryly. "Robert did say I wouldn't go that far away from a workshop."

Rhodey must have been too discombobulated by the mere fact that Tony was casually talking to him like nothing had broken between them to notice that he was being made fun of. Or he was distracted by something else. He was definitely looking at Tony very oddly.

"What?"

Rhodey clapped Tony on the back and bumped their shoulders together. Apparently, he had decided on the fake-it-till-you-make-it approach to the reparation of their friendship. Tony didn't believe it would work – no one had ever managed to get him to trust them again after he had stopped once – but he did care about Rhodey-bear enough to ply him with the L-word when the situation warranted it, so he was willing to be surprised.

"You're not that attached to your workshop," Rhodey mock-confided. "I could have sold you the trip as field-testing for your latest rifle design, even if you were stone cold sober."

"Why didn't you?" Tony wondered.

"Because hunting humans is evil and those who do it deserve to be shot themselves."

Tony reminded himself that Rhodey didn't mean it like that – that he was parroting the line that had been fed to him by his teachers at West Point and was still being determined by some paper pusher in the Pentagon or the White House, who knew? Who cared?

Rhodey was thinking of those recreational excursions when the organizers cordoned off an area and sent in some poor little men and women who owed money to the wrong people or fell into slave trade, and there was a group of drunk (or maybe high) white people with overinflated sense of importance coming after them with dogs and shotguns.

Sure, that happened. It sounded perfectly inane.

"Yes, yes," Tony agreed, "you're a moral man. Why didn't anybody else?" He had been drunk and high and young and white and loaded and terminally bored once, in the company of like-minded people. That self-entitled asshole with the shotgun could have been him.

"It's too easy," Rhodey dismissed the idea. "There's no challenge in it. You'd get the same satisfaction from shooting at a piece of cardboard."

Tony turned back to the picture of the Winter Soldier. There was just enough Hydra footage on him to make it clear that he was also a victim in this setup, and that he might welcome death as mercy.

Maybe Captain America or the Black Widow would take care of it and make the point moot.

x

T minus thirteen hours and thirty-five minutes, Tony was eating late dinner/early breakfast with Pepper.

It consisted of an assortment of sandwiches.

His stomach responded as if it hadn't gotten anything to eat for days which… was unfortunately plausible.

Even more unfortunately, upon learning that JARVIS already had Hydra by the throat, and there was no emergency to speak of anymore, Pepper veered sharply away from the topic of the fight on terrorism to the topic of Tony's personal life.

For once she seemed to accept that 'normal-people' standards didn't apply to Tony and decided to bulldoze through all the 'normal' crap by acting as if the episode of them being lovers had never happened, and she was back to the starting point of being one of his best friends.

"Dish," she demanded. "Before I take Rhodey's word on it and bury Banner under so many restraining orders that he wouldn't dare step foot into the same country as you for the rest of your natural life."

Tony tried to think back to the now-hazy times at MIT. And afterwards. Banner did his doctorate elsewhere, later, but they had started out during his Masters. Tony had been finishing his own doctorate. His second doctorate? In any case, for a semester, they were both at MIT.

"I met Robert when I was… eighteen? Eighteen, I think. Through Ty Stone, or one of Ty's 'friends'. I don't know. Just – he's brilliant, he's _loudly_ brilliant, I couldn't have passed on someone like that."

"So," Pepper guessed, wise to his ways, "you cheated on Stone."

"I didn't," Tony argued. It was the same argument all over again. "I didn't lie to him about it. It's the exact same thing-"

"You did to me," Pepper filled in. _The same argument all over again_. "You _forgot_ you were spoken for."

"That should tell you how unnatural your idea of monogamy really is."

"Asshole," she grumbled. Then she drew a figurative thick, permanent black marker line behind that argument, shelved it, stamped it as obsolete, and ruined Tony's attempts at dissembling by returning back to the original topic. "You were telling me about Dr Banner."

" _Robert_ ," Tony said with a little too much genuine emotion to it. "Dr Banner's kind of a different person. Mostly."

"I noticed he doesn't beat on you," she pointed out. "Rhodey told me-"

"I know what he told you. Jarvis replayed the whole scene for me. Very touching."

"I should have expected that. You have no idea what privacy is."

"My tower," Tony pointed out.

"Yes, I know." Pepper stole the last roast beef sandwich just as Tony was reaching for it. She showed a blatant lack of remorse for this act of thievery. "So, you met _Robert_ , and he was very smart, so you slept with him. Even though he hit you."

"No!" Tony rolled his eyes as theatrically as he could. "Potts, I've got my masochistic moments like any other guy, but-"

"Stark, was this some hardcore BDSM thing that you let Jim misinterpret-?"

"No." He sighed and cast about for an explanation that would sound remotely understandable to a sane, neurotypical person like his ex-girlfriend. "Look, Pepper… by the time I met Robert, I was used to being hit. Howard trained me pretty good, and Ty taught me to expect it in _romantic_ context." He stressed the word mockingly, because there was little to no romance in most of his _relationships_ – usually he would just say 'sexual', but when talking about hitting that had a different connotation.

Pepper stared at him with that hateful mixture of exasperation and pity that made him want to walk away and get drunk. But if he did that, the woman would just reopen the topic on another day, and Tony would have had to do all this _again_.

"The difference was that Robert never hit me to put me down, or make me afraid or control me. Just plain reacted when he got angry. There was never any sort of manipulation behind it." This was why Tony had known exactly what to expect from the Hulk even before he had met him. "It was an honest reaction – more honest than anything I'd ever gotten out of anyone."

"You're really messed up," Pepper informed him, but at least she eased on the pity.

Tony decided to get rid of the rest of it. "Less than I was then. Because, Potts, what I said about putting someone down? I did that to him. I mocked him, and I kept bringing up his painful memories and generally did whatever I could to get him angry enough to lash out. With full knowledge of the consequences _and_ of the fact that he hated himself afterwards for every time he hurt me."

There. The pity was now gone completely, replaced with horror. Pepper flushed; her eyes narrowed and lines bisected her forehead. She looked like she was considering punching Tony herself.

He smirked. "So, see? You want to make a case for abuse? Sure, but, between the two of us, Robert was the victim."

Pepper stood and shook her head. "No. You were _both_ victims."

"If I may, Miss Potts," JARVIS spoke before Tony could make the mistake of telling his CEO to pack up her bleeding heart and take it out of his presence before he showed her how much of a victim he _wasn't_ , "I believe sir prefers _survivor_. Likewise, Dr Banner has deserved this appellation beyond a shred of doubt. Please do not discount their agency based on your inability to empathize with their experience."

Pepper's jaw sank. It was a funny sight – this perpetually calm and collected CEO stumped that Tony's A.I. called her on her shit. He was going to ask JARVIS for the picture later. Maybe put in on Pep's Wikipedia page.

"We're different now," Tony said, and laughed. "Comes with the territory."

Banner hadn't hit Tony at all since they met on the Helicarrier. Tony was shocked by the realization that he hadn't missed it. At all.

After Pep went off to prepare for another business day – as usual (Hydra? What Hydra? Nothing to see here, move it along) – at S.I., Tony pressed a kiss to his fingers and let it fly in the direction of the camera mounted in the opposite corner of the room.

"Thanks, buddy."

"I have your back, sir," Jay assured him. "Although, you were quite convincing even before I interrupted."

"Eh," Tony shrugged. "I'm a good liar."

x

T minus one minute, Tony and JARVIS were as ready as they ever would be.

"I feel like I should be delivering a speech," Tony said, eyes sliding over the kaleidoscope of switching security feeds from all over the Triskelion. "Something like, we few, we happy few, we band of… insert applicable relation?"

"Daddy?" the A.I. suggested dryly.

Tony rolled his eyes. "Okay. How about the Captain America classic: ' _heil this, motherfucker!_ '?"

"I have detected an unrelated breach of SHIELD firewalls, sir."

"Okay." Tony shrugged. "Release the Kraken!"

He had gone with the theme of Greek mythology. Trojans were left behind, of course, just as plan Y contingency, but Tony took his inspiration from the W.S.C. nuke, and between Jay and him designed the virtual equivalent. See them walk this off.

No matter how hard they formatted, anything saved on those servers in the next fifty years would come out mutated. Ha!

"The Kraken is on the loose, sir," the A.I. informed him. "The fuse blowers are ready to detonate at your will."

Tony had not gone near the newly constructed Helicarriers, as a matter of fact, since Fury, Coulson and Hill were en masse paranoid enough to not let him near their babies, but he had installed a kill switch in the casings of his arc reactors. Moreover, he hadn't asked, but there was a very good chance of Jay having commandeered an LMD to plant more FB's all through the vessels.

"Thy will be done," Tony muttered to himself.

He watched the 'carriers rise out of the Potomac. There was a battle going on throughout the Triskelion – he assumed that was Rogers, Romanov and Barton. The air support was new, but should it have been surprising to see Hawkeye with wings?

"According to the schematics, they reach actionable height at three thousand feet, sir," JARVIS warned him.

"Blow everything at three hundred," Tony told him. "Let's make a splash worthy of a Kraken."

x

JARVIS blew Hydra into the water (of the Potomac) and then out of the water (metaphorically), and robbed them of all they were worth information-wise while they fled for high ground. Or to lie low.

Tony strolled by the crash site in D.C., with Pepper in a stunning light blue executive suit and a retinue of lawyers that made up the perfect background for her splendor. The attending techs with Tony at the helm salvaged whatever was salvageable, because while Fury might have paid through his nose for the repulsor tech, that didn't mean Tony was just going to let it go. Tony had kept an eye on it for a reason. Aside from all others (apparently very real) considerations, he had a way of remotely destroying the arc reactors and the repulsors if someone started taking them apart to find out how they worked.

The contract stated that Tony was the only one to do any maintenance on the repulsors. The arc reactors were coded to his biometrics, because he didn't trust their integrity to a mere contract, notwithstanding that Fury cared about contracts like he cared about weather – it was important to have some in place, but it did not affect him personally – so of course he was going to get some of his minions to try and take the technology apart.

Not even speaking about the very real possibility that any SHIELD vessel might fall into enemy hands.

To watch Rogers _not_ tell it, that was just what happened.

Speaking of.

"Rogers did a thorough job on these," Tony mentioned from the innards of a wet wreck hanging from four cranes.

"I'd love to see SHIELD try to sue him after this mess," replied one of the attending lawyers. Who, under that off-the-rack suit, was probably in fact an ex-agent of SHIELD. Possibly an active agent of SHIELD, provided that enough of the organisation survived on paper.

Tony had his hang-ups about paper, but a time came in the life of an intelligence agency when a paper archive turned out to be really fucking practical.

Tony had to respect Fury's paranoia when it came to this.

"There is a reason for not suing the victims of your own manhunts," said one of Pepper's lawyers to her buddy, who looked about as receptive as a marble statue.

"Especially one as high-profile as Captain America," the buddy replied coldly.

"That was all Hydra, thanks a lot," said the possibly-still-SHIELD agent, offended. "Miss Potts, is there any way of finding out for certain what side Hawkeye was on?"

Wily fucker.

Pepper shifted into her 'talk to the hand' stance, although the hand was not literal in her case, because she had too much class. Tony was very attracted to her. He was also too wet at the moment to properly appreciate the hotness, so he turned most of his attention back to dismantling the bedding of the Aramis arc reactor.

If SHIELD wanted it back, they were welcome to pay for it again.

"The only involved combatants confirmed to oppose the Hydra were Steven Rogers, Natasha Romanov, Samuel Wilson and Sharon Carter," Pepper was saying, as much to the reporters behind the police line as to the questioner. "Assume all others to be compromised. For more details, I recommend contacting the Department of Defense," she concluded.

Tony had provided the comprehensive listing of known Hydra agents, together with their files and laundry lists of crimes to not only the DoD, but also the CIA, the FBI, and the Interpol. Likely as not, the alphabet soup was also infiltrated, but the redundancy almost guaranteed that the mugshots and the names would get into the relevant databases.

If not, JARVIS could also slip them in directly.

And identify the people involved in stalling the process.

Tony loved it when a plan came together. Loved it exponentially more when he didn't have to walk out of his door to make it happen.

"Miss Potts, Miss Potts!" shouted someone from behind the line – by the sound of it they carried their own sound system on their person, because all other voices formed a barrier that would have been impenetrable without technological add-ons. "What is Stark Industries' official stand on the so-called Fall of SHIELD?"

Pepper pretended she hadn't heard anything from that side.

Later, still wet and cold and smelling like a river, Tony found a text from her. It contained the time and place for his press conference, and the cheerful message: 'Clean up your own mess, Iron Man'.

x

"Did the emergence of Hydra affect you personally, Mr Stark?" was the first question directed at him after he had finished reading the text Pepper's PR people prepared for him, and opened the floor.

Tony speared the olive in his martini with a toothpick and swirled it around the glass. "Sure it did," he said, trying to find the balance between his don't-give-a-fuck public persona and the good-boy persona Pepper tried to mold him into. "It's a black day for everybody when we find Nazis among us. Iron Man – that's me-"

Cue obligatory laughs in response to his faux-drunk grin.

"-is not as much of a symbol of freedom and justice as Captain America – let's face it, this is _me_ -"

Cue more obligatory laughs, and some mean real laughs, too.

"-but if you look back, Iron Man always stood against terrorism." Tony managed to turn the mood somber enough to stave off any further laughs. He leaned his elbows against the speaker's desk, bent his head closer to the microphones, and set his voice lower. " _I_ always stood against terrorism. If you feel like you need to wage the war to protect your own rights – that happens. Unfortunately, humankind is not historically a species that can resolve interpersonal conflicts without warfare. But nothing, _nothing_ ever gives anyone the right to turn weapons on the armless, the helpless, the infirm – the civilian. And I will not stand by while this is happening."

He took a deep breath, ostensibly readying himself for a yet more dramatic proclamation. Most of the audience stared at him, hungry for his words.

"Especially," Tony continued, "while this is happening within our own country. I, like the good men and women in law enforcement, will stand against terror! I stand against Hydra!"

Here was the perfect moment to say 'I stand with Captain America', and if Tony were someone else, he might have used it.

But he wasn't. He was the Iron Man. If Rogers wanted, he was welcome to hold a press conference himself and state that _he_ stood with _Iron Man_. It would have been immensely satisfying, but it wasn't likely to happen.

"What would you say to Captain America?!" asked a reporter that might have heard those unuttered words in the pause there.

Fortunately, Tony had expected this one. "Yeah," he said, "here's looking at you, Cap." He raised his glass of martini. Humphrey, eat your heart out.

The crowd went wild. Tony sent off a few kisses, complete with the 'mwah' sound effects, except someone in the backstage had been quick enough to turn off the mikes, so his sound effects were lost.

Never mind. Tony grinned at the flashes and raised his arm, showing the victory sign. Then he turned his hand around without changing the configuration of his fingers, and showed it to the cameras that way.

Three guesses which of the photos would appear on the covers tomorrow. Pepper might plot to kill him for the cinch, but even she would have to concede that the _asshole_ Tony Stark had always sold better than the _reluctantly sympathetic_ Tony Stark.

x

Banner was only a little startled when the Iron Man armor landed on the dirt path outside the shabby (to the point of uninhabitability) house. He looked around for witnesses, found a few cocoa-brown street rats, and resigned himself to his fate with a sigh.

"Sentinel mode," Tony muttered.

The armor petaled open and let him step out. It was a brand new feature that Banner hadn't ever seen before. Sadly, he seemed more exasperated than impressed with Tony's genius.

He looked good. Too thin, and habitually stooped, but active and full of that odd vim that in him seemed to ebb and flow according to some unpredictable chart.

"I've got bad news and good news," Tony informed him grandiosely. "Bad news is that if it weren't for Captain Icicle-up-the-ass, Hydra would have killed us both." There was a chance that Tony or JARVIS might have cracked Project Insight even without the calling sign of a hunt on Cap, but it wasn't all that likely – and why mess with a great line?

"Or," Tony admitted, "more likely killed me and _pissed off_ Big and Laconic. I don't think they actually had enough fire power to deal him significant damage. Aaanyway…" He rocked on his heels.

Banner hoisted his bag, adjusted the strap, and surveyed Tony over a frankly horrible mess of a stubble. Didn't they have any razors in… Côte d'Ivoire? Was that it? Tony had flown straight to the coordinates; he wasn't sure on which side of the border he had landed.

"I've heard a little about that on the radio," Banner admitted. _On the radio_ , for fuck's sake. "It does explain the encounter I had with Agent Sitwell."

And that explained Banner's sudden flight and subsequent prolonged absence, although why he couldn't send a fucking postcard from an airport Tony didn't have a clue.

"The good news?" Banner inquired.

The good news, as far as Tony was concerned, was that his not-fiancé hadn't done a runner yet. Which meant he was at least inclined to listen. Which he had better fucking be, after Tony had built him an orbital station to coddle his issues.

"The good news," Tony said instead, "is that I've managed to salvage their programming." Between his forefinger and his thumb he lifted a data card with his personal key to the Project Insight files on his very secret server farm. "Wanna come play Whack-a-terrorist with me and Veronica?"


End file.
